


Obtain Bearing

by unreadlibrary



Category: Samurai Champloo
Genre: Action, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Complete, F/M, Novella, Post-Series, Romance, Slow Burn, Some OCs as needed, but mostly romance, forgive the action tags, i've got to stop rereading this or i'll be tempted to rewrite this from scratch, last chapter is just meta-commentary, lots of waxing philosophical going on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11817375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unreadlibrary/pseuds/unreadlibrary
Summary: Fuu has made a life for herself. It's a good life. But when someone close to her is threatened by a certain Ryukyuan swordsman, she has to redefine her center of gravity again.Or, what could presumably happen three years and eight months following the finale.





	1. [Traveling Mercies]

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE FROM 2018: Whoo boy, reading back over parts of this fic makes me cringe haha. There's so much I like and yet so much that I'm like "Wait, what?" I apologize in advance for the overabundance of metaphors and some of the pretensious lines. But this baby is still near and dear to my heart--the character arc, the romance, a few lines I'm actually really proud of. So thank you, readers old and new, for enjoying it with me. :-)
> 
> NOTE FROM 2017: Yes, I did research. But not that much. So, on a shameless exculpatory note, don’t worry about the oniwaban, the Portuguese, or unlikely allies—any and all anachronisms and inaccuracies. This is Samurai Champloo, after all.

_I. [Traveling Mercies]_

_\--_

_wish we’d grown up on the same advice_

_and our time was right_

_keep a place for me_

_I’ll sleep between y’all, it’s nothing_

_**-Frank Ocean, “Self Control”**_

_**\--** _

It was autumn on a gypsy road and valleys by moonlight, cities by day. It turned to knife-throwing and the mathematics of gambling, learning how to milk a cow and catch a fish in one town, how to paint a screen and dye silk in the next. Fuu taught herself to sail. She never managed to stay long from the coastline.

Before she knew it, she was older than fifteen.

There were ashes, first, to revisit. That had been her southward journey. The old house, a relative—there was always Edo, there was always a barge. She revisited the buildings they had touched, because buildings were slightly more dependable than people. They usually lasted longer and they always stayed put, because they wanted to, because they didn’t have to move or need to change.

When her path changed to follow the fires of the Shimabara Rebellion, she met her quiet companion for the first time in a year. They exchanged their renewed views on life: the mala beads, the wooden rosary. She wishes it was the three of them. It should be the three of them, at least one more time.

They traveled together for a time, a span of four days. Where they ended was the village that Fuu would finally learn to settle in. Jin acted like they came upon it by serendipity, but she guessed, even then, that he had known this would be the place for her to be found—by herself, or later by him, or later by _him,_ it could not be certain.

“Promise me you’ll meet him again someday,” she said, “And sock him one for me,”

They had smiled.

“Until we meet again,”

There was nothing so satisfying as saying goodbye at the right time. Still she didn’t know if she’d end that moment with tears or laughter. Instead, she prayed the same prayer she’d been praying. Traveling mercies. She prayed that prayer for years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huh, after letting this story sit for a month and reading over it, I realize the metaphors and lyricism is a little dense. But I think I'll leave this work here and all its foibles--because really, if we didn't stop ourselves, the editing would never end. For those of you kind enough to stick through some of the pretentious stuff, thank you. There's some bits I'm proud--most especially the fact that this baby is FINISHED.


	2. [The Carpenter]

II. [The Carpenter]

\--

_once the myth has been told_

_the lens deforms it as lightning_

**_-Gallant + Sufjan Stevens, “Blue Bucket of Gold”_ **

\--

 

“Impossible.”

The two women fanned themselves in the summer heat.

“That’s the point of the story,”

It was the older woman who spoke, “A sword for a plow, a monster for a husband, a wench for a shrine maiden—why not?”

The young woman moved with a learned, bright grace, catching a fly beneath her tea cup. She let it go.

“Where’d you learn that?” asked Etsu, the older woman.

“Around,” said Fuu, the younger woman.

Etsu continued her work, embroidering gold thread in red silk. “Well, if stories aren’t true I don’t know what is,”

She paused mid-stitch. There was a round look to her eyes that made her companion pause. Fuu knew that look.

“Etsu—“ The young woman caught her as she slumped forward.

Etsu’s hand clawed into Fuu’s shoulder. Fuu swallowed the pain—she was still a samurai’s daughter. Etsu’s voice came out as though caught in a tunnel:

_“The eighth month is approaching, but I have nothing to wear,”_

Fuu hadn’t heard a vision quite like that before. “What?”

Etsu let go of the Fuu’s shoulder. The woman sighed, using the fold of her open yukata to fan herself, “Fuu, this heat is _exasperating_ my visions,”

Fuu smiled, recovering.

“I’ll fetch us some water,” she said.

As Fuu slid on her shoes at the house entrance, Etsu entreated her again.

“Careful—there were two strangers on the road. There’s that missionary—the one with the blue eyes,”

“Ferunando-sensei?” Fuu misunderstood her, began sliding the door open, “Really Etsu, he’s hardly a stranger!”

She slid the door closed behind her with a laugh, but nonetheless looked down the road longer than was necessary.

The stream was just at the bottom of the hill. Etsu’s visions made her a wary person, Fuu concluded. Bucket in hand, she walked towards water.

A few things pulled her future forward, and one of those things was water. She always found herself at coastal towns. She had come here two years ago. She had stayed for the kimono shop.

The wares were kept in a dusty attic, its customers few and far but devoted. Fuu could never hope to afford a kimono such as those, but the day the shop closed Fuu had stood outside in the rain and mourned with its former owner. That is when Fuu was asked to live on at the house on the hill outside town.

“To keep an old woman company,” Etsu had said, “And to cook the meals. That’s all I ask. That’s all I can do,”

Fuu drew the bucket of water and took a drink. There were other bits to her life now, bits that hadn’t been there before, and somehow they had made a shape larger than the thin but long shadow of her past. Funny how it clung to her even now—but if the shadow was behind her, it must mean that she was traveling toward light.

Something caught Fuu’s eye. The figure’s back was straight, his hair thinning and pale-gold, and as he came closer Fuu filled in the rest of his features by memory. The matching mustache, chin tucked into neck, and strong piercing blue gaze. The thing that had first caught her eye swung back and forth in his left hand—a cross necklace. Fuu stood as he approached the stream.

“Ferunando-sensei,”

“Miss Fuu,”

He wore a simple ensemble that he’d commissioned from Etsu within the first month of his arriving. He spoke admirable Japanese, even if his accent did smack strongly of the south. The authorities had long turned a blind eye to his view of the afterlife.

Fuu looked at him now, frankly. His presence had been a comfort when she first came to this town—and he really made no sense at all. How had this man, this village escaped the wrath of the shogunate? She asked herself that every time she looked at him. 

In the pause before conversation, Fuu caught the silver gleam of the cross in his Fernando’s hand. She stood up suddenly.

“Your hand!” Fuu cried. Fernando’s left knuckles and part of his palm were bound in a tourniquet, but the blood had started to seep through.

“I was just coming to the river to dress my wounds,” said Fernando. Fernando always spoke like that—he spoke of God and beauty and hobbies and pain like he was making remarks on the weather.

Fuu watched as he cleaned and redressed his wounds. He bent over a little stiffly but didn’t seem the worse for wear. She thought it might have been a household mishap until she saw the bruise beginning to swell on his cheekbone.

“Can I ask what happened?” she asked. For some reason, her Japanese was more formal with Fernando than it was with anyone else. And he spoke just as he always did—like he had been born and bred, if not on the mainland—in some respectable place like Edo or Kyoto—than like those who hailed from the southern kingdom. That accent with his formal speech was secretly amusing to Fuu.

“Got in a fight with a pirate,” Fernando said, his eyes scanning the water, “Didn’t expect that on so cool an evening,”

The two of them were close enough that they could hear the ocean in the distance. Behind Etsu’s house was the spot where the river fed the sea. It was just then that a gull called out, turning away from the valley and realizing how far it had flown from the beach.

“A pirate?” Fuu murmured, her ears filled with the ocean’s lull.

“You know the addition I had built?” Fernando pulled tight on his new tourniquet, “They just finished putting up the roof yesterday. Excellent workmanship—but that’s what I’ve come to expect from the Japanese. It was a rough group of fellows, but this one—“

Fernando fished a pipe out of his coat and lit it. The smoke smelled sweet.

“This one,” Fernando continued, “Knows the seven rings of Hell. Possibly he’s discovered the eighth,”

Fernando paused. “But if he wasn’t born to build houses I don’t know what he was put on this earth for,”

Fuu asked, quickly, “One of the carpenters attacked you?”

Fernando nodded, “He was the last to leave. I offered him lunch, and once we had finished the meal he pulled out a sword,”

Fernando batted his hand through the smoke like the rest of the scene wasn’t interesting. “It was long and violent and only took so long because I was so surprised. But I’d known by the look of him that he knew how to take care of himself,”

Fernando sighed, and the smoke spilled from his mouth. Fuu peered up, finding shapes through the smoke and the light through the leaves.

“Where is he now?” she asked, almost a whisper, perhaps because she didn’t want to inhale the smoke.

“At the church,” said Fernando, as though the fact had been obvious.

“Can I see him?”

*

When Fernando slid the door open to the addition, Fuu first blinked back the sun. It poured generously from strange windows at the back of the room. Fuu held back a breath, realizing what they were. She had observed the building from her path to and from town, seeing it frequently over the weeks—the skeleton of the walls, the dots of people pulling timber and thatching the roof. It had been a few weeks since she had been pious and attended the meetings. Now she realized what Fernando had done. She was about to turn around and tell him how very much it looked like a _Christian_ church; she wanted to tell him how beautiful and dangerous the building was. Instead, the windows—enchanting as they were, letting in stained light—became distant again.

Fernando stepped between Fuu and the young man on the floor, but she had already braced herself. The bruises and bandages and years distorted her memory of him, but Fuu said his name out loud and woke the fitful dreamer.

“Mugen,”

His eyes opened. There was a look of peace on his face. When his gaze found her, a bit of the usual turmoil returned, and it pinned Fuu to the spot. She felt that he had not wanted to see her and that he had not wanted to be seen. Fernando turned to her.

“You know him?” Fernando asked.

Fuu inhaled. “He’s a decent swordsman, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Fernando admitted.

Fuu looked at Fernando, holding his gaze.

“Then you, sensei, are an even better warrior than you are a priest,”

Fernando never lost his composure, but now he coughed. He turned it into a laugh.

“Lord forgive me, but yes, I’m more a sinner than a saint,”

Fernando looked between the two of them. Fernando’s hand twitched. Something bothered him, but he didn’t let Fuu see. Still mulling for a hasty excuse, he took a few steps towards the door.

“I forgot to check on the Widower, but I may be a while. Will you be safe with him?”

The Widower--the ancient owner of the house. Fernando's benefactor. _His protector_ , Fuu thought might be the more appropriate term. 

Fuu nodded and gave Fernando a convincing smile, “I can explain everything later,”

Fernando nodded. His shape lingered only a breath behind the rice paper. Fuu kept her back to Mugen. A moment later, when he snored loudly, she wanted to thrash him.

Instead she took cool steps toward him, leaned down with all the grace she had learned in her travels, and with precise movements tucked her kimono sleeves back and reached a hand around Mugen’s exposed ankle.

Given Mugen’s quick reflexes, Fuu barely escaped a kick in the ribs.

“Your hands are freezing, dammit!”

Well, this was typical.

“You’re a carpenter now?” Fuu asked him, keeping her tone even. Fuu shuffled over to his side, but he turned his head away. Mugen looked embarrassed. He tried to cross his arms but realized he couldn’t without wincing.

“How long has it been?” she asked him.

“You think I’ve been keeping track or something?”

“I think it’s been three years and nearly eight months,” she said.

“Let me guess,” Mugen turned towards her, wearing a smile that prepared her to not like what he going to say next, “You’re still some tea shop waitress—and an unused old maid, huh?”

Fuu thought Mugen would laugh at her actual occupation. She wouldn’t give him a clue for that reason alone. On second thought, he probably wouldn’t laugh. She couldn’t tell him for that reason either.

Mugen lifted his arm again, this time in the wrong position. He winced and at that moment Fuu caught his wrist in the circle of her thumb and index finger. Her smile was demure.

“I studied under a martial arts teacher in the town I lived in before this,” she said, and then, applying only pressure, bent Mugen’s arm to her will. He howled in pain, but she didn’t know he was still able to use his other arm. He grabbed a handful of her hair. She pushed. He pulled.

“On the count of three,” Fuu began. They both inhaled sharply.

“Tap out!” Fuu said, and they both did so, each giving one last wrench for good measure. Fuu nursed her head for a moment, glaring at Mugen. He affected boredom. She sighed.

“Mugen,”

Mugen stifled a yawn.

“Are you being paid to fight Ferunando-sensei?”

He closed his eyes as though a great weight rested between them. “Sometimes I collect on debts,”

Fuu—she still had a dramatic streak—sighed languorously, melting onto her back.

“Same old, same old,” she said with a swash of her hand.

Mugen spat, “Who said I was trying to impress you?”

“Well, I still don’t believe that nonsense about you being a carpenter,” Fuu sat back up, but found that Mugen was staring at her and she felt as though she’d got caught on a hook and he was about to pull.

“You don’t see these walls coming down anytime soon, do you?” he asked.

“Why are you being so sensitive?”

“I can be a carpenter if I want to, no matter what some broad says!”

“ _You’re_ a carpenter?”

As answer, Mugen stuck an angry arm out at the addition. It was a long, empty room, but Fuu had to admit it was a solid construction. The way the windows were set, the roof, the atmosphere.

“The other fellows must have really been something,” she concluded. Mugen cursed, but he did so in his native dialect. He caught Fuu’s frank stare and stuck his chin up defiantly.

“What?”

“I just can’t believe it was Ferunando-sensei who did this to you,” Fuu said.

Mugen didn’t look angry, he just turned his head away so Fuu couldn’t tell what he might be thinking. His thumb ticked to a time that didn’t make sense. He turned back to her.

“Do you believe in God?”

“Well,” Fuu said, “Yes,”

“They’re cold-blooded, yeah?” said Mugen, “Even this Christian God that the priest chants for,”

“What do you mean?”

“He killed people in his name, that’s what,” said Mugen, testing the mobility of his sore wrist.

Fuu swallowed, but when she spoke her voice was calm.

“You look atrocious,” she said, standing up, “Next time I come we’re going to do something about all of that on your face,”

Mugen felt the rough stubble on his chin, “Eh?”

Fuu slid the door open, didn’t turn as she spoke, “Stay good and sorry because I’m coming back first thing tomorrow!”

For a moment Fuu stood on the other side of the door, cooling. Her hands balled into fists and as she released them, her thoughts settled. Her awareness, too. She finally noticed Fernando. She blushed.

Fernando rescued her with an offer of tea.

*

By the time one of the Widower’s servants had set down the two cups and Fuu settled herself on the cushion, she had more or less returned to herself. Still, when she looked at Fernando’s hands (clean fingernails, which at that moment seemed deceiving) she had to suppress a shudder. She thought it worse to imagine things, so she steeled herself with a draught of tea and then asked the question outright. He was a priest, so she figured he could handle it.

“Does God ask people to kill?”

From the look on Fernando’s face, he could either give her the short answer or the long one. He knew the best answer would be one that weren’t supplied by his own words at all.

“He said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son,’”

“The story of Abraham and Isaac?” Fuu guessed, only newly familiar with the account. Fernando nodded.

“But—” Fuu took a tasteless drink of tea, this time to buy a little time. She brushed at her yukata as she spoke, “—where did _you_ learn to fight, Ferunando-sensei?”

“I learned to truly fight at the Battle of Montes Claros,” He gave the answer easily enough, but there was a filmy look in his eyes. He stared at a patch of sunlight. “But after that, I became a priest,”

“And after you were a priest?”

His hand slowly came over his mouth. He smoothed his mustache.

“After I was a priest, I came here,” he said finally, “It took me a long time to understand the Japanese people. I first knew them as Japanese, then as people, and now I can say—God as my witness—I know the mistakes I made in the first,”

He turned--someone was at the screen, “Oh, I didn’t see you come in,”

Fuu had only see the Widower once or twice before, but he stood now in the doorway. Eyes closed, the Widower beamed and fluttered his hand (the only part of him that didn’t look to be on the brink of brittleness).

“It’s alright,” he said softly.

The Widower placed his hands behind his back and asked Fuu if she knew about the word sanctuary.

“Sir?”

“It is immunity afforded by a place of refuge, a place kept by holy men and women,” said the Widower, “That is what we have built here. It is a place for my soul to find its peace, I think,”

The Widower looked briefly at Fernando.

“Your coming has been a strange blessing, since I lost my wife,” he said.

Fernando looked down. Fuu had never seen Fernando embarrassed before; not even her questions had done that. Looking between the two of them, Fuu was embarrassed by her own mistrust. She looked down at her hands.

“Sir,” she said, “Can you let my friend stay here until he’s well? I’ll talk some sense into him, I swear it,"

Fuu bowed over the table, halfway between Fernando and the Widower. She hung there a moment. When the Widower spoke, she could hear the smile in it:

“Why else do you think we are keeping him in the sanctuary?” 

Fuu watched the Widower shuffle out of the room, and when he was gone it was Fernando that broke the silence.

“He has shown nothing but compassion since I’ve come here,” said Fernando, “His love for his wife was deep—he understands the pain of loss. And your friend is safe from me. Don't fret,”

Fuu finished her tea. “I just worry that he isn’t safe from himself, even now,”

Fernando escorted her back to the main entrance and watched her leave in silence. He stood there, still absorbing the wake of that conversation, his heart feeling like it needed an incessant cry; like the cicadas in summer. As he stood listening to that sound, he heard bitter laughter from the other room. It was cut short.

Fernando lit his pipe, slid on his shoes, and took a slow walk into town. The sun set the same as it did every evening. The children greeted him and mothers clasped their hands together and men crossed themselves. Fernando made it down to the beach to splash cold saltwater on his face, touched the swollen flesh around his eye. He remembered the beaches of Portugal, the beaches of the Ryukyu Islands.

_“Collecting on a debt, huh?"_


	3. [Stone Walls]

III. [Stone Walls]

\--

_search for things to extol_

_friend, the fables delight me_

_**-Gallant + Sufjan Stevens, “Blue Bucket of Gold”** _

\--

 

Fuu had a small table of things that were all her own. She kept it out in the corner of the house that was shared with the living space and sleeping area, hidden just behind the folding screen. Fuu had purchased the small lacquer table herself, and the few items she kept in it and on it were mementos from a life that had once been characterized by wanderlust.

Her mother’s pins. Her tanto (now heavy with bobbies and charms). A notebook of pressed flowers, the pages wide enough to contain several sunflowers. A bowl she had won from an eating contest and three cooking knives from another. Cheaper things, too, treasures because they came with stories or caught Fuu’s eye at the right time: a small bit of volcanic rock from the climb at Mt. Fuji, a coin purse of sand said to come from the loneliest beach in the world, a wooden rosary she kept for her father’s sake. And a small drawing she had received from Fernando.

It was an illustration, in that elaborate European style, of a young maiden and a beast. Fuu had first wondered if such creatures as that existed where Fernando came from. The girl herself was strange enough—hair the color of watered-down honey, eyes gray. The girl clung to the shoulder of the beast, even though its head—it looked like a lion to Fuu—was set against her own shoulder, teeth poised. It had the torso of a wounded man, wings of a crow for arms, tails of serpents.

Fernando told her the illustration belonged to a common fairy tale told across the continent of Europe. It was the most feminine thing he had on his person, and he thought she might like it. It was a charming gesture, coming from him. She had asked Fernando for the story on multiple occasions, but he always seemed to forget.

Fuu pulled out the postcard out of habit as she prepared her hair that morning and played over another imaginary scene she’d concocted on her own. She couldn’t place why the girl looked so brave, even in what seemed to Fuu a position of defeat. The girl didn’t even have a tanto on her.

Fuu grabbed her own, slid on her geta, and made her way to the forked path between the hills, away from the cliffs overlooking the sea. When she came to the house, one of the Widower’s caretakers greeted her, and explained that Fernando was away.

She’d been coming here every day for a week.

That day Fuu might have described Mugen’s state as sleep paralysis. His eyes were barely open, his chest moved up and down, and that was all. He was never this unlively. When she leaned over close to his face, her breath blew along his brow—nothing.

“Mugen, what’s wrong with you?” she asked, not pausing in passing her tanto carefully down his jaw, shaking off the excess shaving soap.

He blinked, “There was a bird on the roof,”

Out of reflex, Fuu looked up at the beams of the ceiling. She jerked her shoulders.

Something cold and slimy had slipped down the front of her yukata and what was worse was that it was alive—wriggling—the more she moved the farther down it got—she’d have to undress her at this point just to—Mugen was laughing—her ears were burning— _what on this forsaken earth_ was in her yukata?

With a look of consuming wrath, Fuu reached down her yukata and unceremoniously pulled out a slug that had the misfortune to slip through the cracks of the addition, find itself under Mugen’s gaze, and thrown into the first tier of hell. It barely escaped with its life, flung to the opposite end of the room.

Mugen could have kissed himself. His head tipped back, throat full of laughter. Fuu, catching her breath, could only take satisfaction in imagining a thousand deaths.

Mugen was suddenly sober. “But there really was a bird on the roof,” he said.

He held her gaze a moment before he broke into a grin.

“Really,” Fuu sighed, gathering up the dishes and cloths. She threw Mugen’s haori over her arm.

“What will you do once you’ve recovered?” Fuu asked him, standing some distance from him, surrounded by her things but making no movement to leave. Mugen, who had been cracking his knuckles one by one, eyed Fuu. Half of his face twitched with amusement. In one fluid motion he leapt to his feet. He only swayed for a moment before regaining his balance.

Fuu’s mouth opened a little, but then she was only half-surprised.

“Good,” she said finally, “You can help me take these things to the river,”

*

Etsu was walking back from a delivery—a minister’s daughter had needed a new kimono after the birth of her son. Etsu enjoyed this work, but her heart had been completely invested in the project she had at home. What was this vision that, without fail, visited her week after week?

It had been growing all summer—it was such a lovely story, but sad, and she could not tell it at the time, if it would come to be or not. It was a terrible longing, to give birth to this thing.

Her designs had always been prophetic. Her clients believed that her works brought them good luck when all Etsu did was receive visions of what might come to pass—if she saw danger by water, for example, she would ward a kimono sleeve with bridges—if she saw true affection, she would choose the colors that she saw representing either partner. Creating something tangible out of waking dreams had always been a pleasure for her. At times, it seemed a necessary relief. Visions would come two or three at a time, and she never knew where to start. Now she dreamed of moonlight and lovers, stone walls and golden houses, and other things beside—multitudinous, a range of animals, rooster, fish, tanager, and things that had no shape or reason—that was always at the back of the visions, the great void.

Even if her mind was more aware of things that were true instead of exact, Etsu’s eyes were still sharp. She noticed something then that even the birds and wind did not—the figure moved so smoothly with them that it did not occur to nature to point him out. It was a shape too dark and massive to belong to an animal just loping across the roof of the Widower’s house, however.

Etsu stopped in her tracks and tried to understand what her eyes were telling her. _The second stranger_ , she thought.

Moments later, two figures emerged from the house. She saw Fuu’s familiar yellow yukata (she had helped make it herself). She was trailed by a man that Etsu only assumed was the old friend that Fuu had mentioned in passing to her in the last week—the first stranger.

Etsu had been told about the girl’s old traveling companions before.

_“Ah,” she had said, “It’s good to enjoy the possibilities while you are young. First love is always sweeter than marriage. But you managed to bag two lovers!”_

_“Don’t call it that. They were friends,”_

_Etsu had laughed._

_“Did you ever want one of them to be your lover?”_

_“I didn’t want a lover—I don’t. Now please Etsu,”_

_“Ah! Of course! Your father was a Christian. That’s bad manners, I suppose. Well, did you ever want one of them for a husband?”_

_“As though he’d be fit to be a husband!”_

Etsu watched the three figures now—the black figure retreated from the roof and then was truly gone.

Fuu and her companion went in the direction of the river. Etsu would probably pass them along the way, but she wouldn’t say anything. She simply noted the way the man looked at Fuu when her head was turned away.

*

Mugen yawned and placed his hands behind his head, “Yeah, I was married for about three days,”

Fuu, to her credit, didn’t stop what she was doing. She carefully wrung out Mugen’s sopping shirt and placed it over a branch to dry. Her plan to extort information about his vendetta against Fernando—how all the strange pieces of their lives might have fit together yet again—had been a complete failure. Giving up, she had asked him something flippant.

“Well,” she said now, “I wasn’t expecting that,”

Mugen swung himself up on a branch and dangled back and forth.

“It was three days of paradise, girly,” he said, “Her father got it annulled somehow. Had to give back the dowry, had to get chased out of the prefecture in the middle of January—“

Fuu scoffed, “So, you just married a woman for her money,”

He landed on his feet. Fuu didn’t look at him till the silence began ringing in her ears.

“That’s the kind of thing you’d expect me to do, huh?” he said.

Fuu bit the inside of her cheek. This had not been the conversation she’d wanted with Mugen.

Her pride spoke for her instead.

“Yes,” she replied curtly.

“Well, I don’t see you with a noble oldboy,” he said, and he walked a way down the embankment, “Bare it all for the fat stacks—that’s what smart girls do, you know. They don’t wait around for four-eyed samurai,”

Fuu gave him a withering look. “Really Mugen, what are you talking about?”

He skipped a rock—spectacularly—down the river.

Fuu stood beside him, then rested on her haunches. “I miss him,” she said, “Don’t you?”

Mugen joined her at her new height. “Why’d we split up again?” he asked.

Fuu smiled. “That was the happiest day of my life, you know,”

Mugen glanced at her.

"And the saddest,”

He made a noncommittal sound.

“Ferunando-sensei,” Fuu shifted her position slightly, and her knee brushed against Mugen’s knee, “He said that the peace of God is ineffable,”

“What now?”

“That there’s a peace you can’t explain. That’s how it felt that day. What about you?”

He didn’t answer for a while, then, “Centimeter is a woman’s thing, you know,”

“Centimeter? I don’t think you’re using that word right,”

Before Mugen could reply, Fuu laughed at him, “You know what? That might be what I am. But you men have more emotions than you know what to do with,”

She stood up, looking down at him. Mugen reared up to remedy this, but when he opened his mouth to say something he had nothing to say. Fuu tipped her head to the side like she wanted to look at something behind him. Mugen checked. The broad must be seeing things.

“You’ve gotten taller,” Fuu said.

“—So have you,”

“Mugen,” It’s like she wanted him to lean closer to hear her say it. He should reciprocate; he should say her name. He’d never said it to her face before.

Fuu continued, “Why did you come here? Do you think it’s fate?”

He snorted in reply. Fuu smiled like they were in on an inside joke.

“I’ve always made my own fate,” she said, eyes looking over the water, eyes looking back at him, “I believed so strongly that we were all meant to meet again. But that day, I wanted to take a chance on the universe’s version of events instead of mine. I didn’t always want to be such a _child_ , just trying to get her way,”

Mugen didn’t meet her gaze. He checked to see if his haori was dry. Of course it wasn’t.

“Mugen,” Fuu said again, and waited until he glanced her way.

“I missed you too, you know,” she said, and grinned from ear to ear.

Something about her was different. It was her stillness. A few years ago she would have said something like that while tipping back and forth on her geta, hands behind her back. Now, her voice a little deeper, her clothes a little different, her stance a little taller—this was the woman she had become by leaving that day.

Mugen leaned against a convenient tree trunk, plucked a piece of grass, and took his gaze across the water.

Fuu continued in a pleasant mood. “We still have some time before everything dries. Why don’t we exchange questions?”

“Didn’t we play this game a long time ago?”

“It’s not a game. It’s conversation,”

“Feh,”

“Then first one goes to me—“

“No way, first goes to me,”

Fuu cleared her throat, “Be my guest,” She took off her shoes and placed her feet in the water to wade.

Mugen asked, “Have you seen him? That other guy?”

Fuu nodded.

Mugen wasn’t surprised.

“Yes,” she said, “I went looking for him,”

“Huh? Where?”

“I thought I would run into you guys again—oh, eventually, and I was starting to feel a little—well, I thought I’d test fate a little. So I went to find that convent. Do you remember?”

“Yeah,” Fuu turned back to Mugen, tears in her eyes. “Wait, how are you laughing and crying at the same time?” Fuu was laughing, and there were tears falling down her face. She’d had the same reaction when she found out that a ronin had kidnapped a young woman from the convent. The legend of it grew to that day—Mugen already knew it. 

“I was just so happy for them!” Fuu now covered her face.

Mugen came to sit by her again.

“Did you wish it was you?” he asked, looking disinterested in the answer. Fuu wiped at her eyes. When she spoke, she ignored his question. 

“It’s my turn for the question now, Mugen,”

Fuu missed his look of disapproval, but he complied. “Shoot,”

“What was it like, being married?”

“I finally had all the sex I wanted,”

Fuu didn’t squirm. She glanced at Mugen for a fleeting second and that was all. He didn’t know what to do with that, not getting a rile out of her. His thumb twitched.

“Can I ask a follow-up question?”

“I guess,”

“Did you love her?”

Again, Fuu’s stillness. She looked like she would be content to accept whatever answer Mugen gave her.

“I admired her,” he admitted. 

“That’s it?”

That's it? That was the girliest thing he'd ever said, and she still wanted him to, what, be over the frigging moon?

“I don’t know! You only get one follow up question,”

“Seriously!”

They sat in silence.

Fuu asked, “Come on, what’s your question?”

Mugen scratched the side of his face. She might have guessed (if she didn’t know better) that it was a contemplative gesture.

“Why didn’t you go back to where we started?” he asked.

Fuu dipped her fingers in the river and began writing something indecipherable in the dirt.

“I did,” she said, more to her knees than to anything else, “For a little while,”

She rinsed her hands and started the process over again. “But I don’t think anything ever happens the same way twice,”

She looked at Mugen. His eyes were closed. She nudged his shoulder, “Just one more question, please?”

He smiled. It was the same kind of smile he’d learned when they all parted ways. He heard her catch her breath, hold it in her chest. His glanced at her.

“Where’s your sword?” she asked. Her eyes—they weren’t afraid. For a moment, she had been ashamed to ask the question, but that was all.

“Don’t you remember?” he said, now standing up and taking his haori from the branch (it still wasn’t dry), “It broke,”

“You carried the hilt with you that day,” Fuu said, catching up with him, “I never thought you’d give up on fighting, but I did think, when you said you wanted to head toward home all those years ago—that you’d do something different,”

“You’re the one who doesn’t believe I’m a carpenter,” he said dryly.

“I also don’t believe you’re bloodthirsty,” Her voice was very quiet. When he looked at her, she amended, “Not anymore,”

Mugen cleared his throat, deciding to give her the real answer, “I met up with that guy, too,”

“Jin?”

“Yeah, I heard about the return of that stupid Mujuu-whatever style of his. Thought I’d look him up and we’d share sake or something,”

Fuu encouraged him with her silence.

“Sure enough, we got sloshed at his dojo,” said Mugen, now picking his ear, “Then he said there’s something he’d been waiting to do, once we met again,”

“And?”

“Turns out he wanted us to forge our swords,” Mugen grinned, “I didn’t know making swords could be so bad-ass!”

Fuu laughed. “Really, men!”

They stopped in front of the Widower’s house, but Fuu continued walking toward the gate that led into the little vegetable garden that the women of the congregation helped to keep on the grounds. Mugen followed her.

“Well, which are you?” Fuu asked, “A carpenter or a blacksmith?”

“Whichever pays,”

“They both take years of skill, you know,”

He shrugged. "I learned some stuff as a kid. There used to be a blacksmith we called out Suckcock--because, well--"

Fuu gave him a withering look. He was distracted momentarily by the way she moved her fingers; slender fingers, slender wrist. He had a great physical memory. He remembered what they felt like; her skin felt real on his palm. Touch Mugen anywhere but his hands.

She was talking.

“Fernando said that you were born to make houses,” Mugen might have said something then, but he noticed a pale old back bent over in the garden. Fuu greeted the old man, said they were sorry to intrude.

“He owns this house,” Fuu whispered to Mugen, “But he’s usually asleep this time of day,”

Mugen didn’t get a good look at the old man, but Fuu exchanged remarks about the weather and the old man offered her some eggplants.

“Lucky!” Fuu exclaimed as they exited the garden. Mugen kept looking over his shoulder. Fuu stopped in front of the main entrance. She angled herself in such a way that Mugen stopped short, felt weighted to the spot.

“You’ll be leaving soon, right?” she asked. She looked at him instead of at her knees this time.

“Why?”

“Because you can’t do this thing you’ve been paid to do,” she told him, “Please, don’t throw everything away. Just—leave, Mugen,”

His mouth crinkled into an indistinct shape. In fact, his face had a little of that old endearing ugliness.

He said, “Jin is the one that told me you were here,”

“Eh?” Fuu watched Mugen slide the entrance open.

“I’ll leave when I’m finished,” he said, and slid the entrance closed behind him.

A sudden, snapping wind dragged at Fuu’s yukata.

She still felt empty on words. It was always this way; the journey had been painful that way. It hurt, caring about they did or didn’t say. This made her feel like a child again, and she was happy to turn on her heels and head home. She’d make a large dinner for Etsu and herself and forgot about Mugen for a little while. She’d think about what she’d say to him later. She’d go back to only thinking about him, where she could make it so that his demons were all lined up and his past was without substance. It helped her chest ache less.

*

Fernando arrived that night, not unexpectedly, as Etsu had told Fuu to set three plates at the table. He’d brought them a bowl of cold, cooked chicken—Fuu couldn’t’ remember the last time she’d had chicken—and they enjoyed it with the eggplant and rice. They didn’t talk about anything in particular. If Fernando had any specific intent behind his visit, he didn’t say. As conversation lulled, Fuu’s eyes fell upon her lacquer table.

“Oh, Fernando, now’s the perfect time!” She jumped up and grabbed the European illustration from the drawer.

She placed it into his hands, “You still haven’t told me the story,”

His face took on an expression she hadn’t seen there before—a grandfatherly one. He almost smiled, his cheek and mustache tucking back slightly. He said something to himself, something in Portuguese.

“My grandfather used to tell me his own version of events,” he said, reverting to Japanese, “He got the two stories mixed up all the time,”

Fuu settled herself comfortably on the floor, cheating a little by pulling her knees up to her chest instead of resting on the backs of her legs.

Fernando rolled his shoulders, cleared his throat, and began:

“In the ancient Hellenic world, there were many myths,”

In the evening warmth, Etsu fanned herself, but kept one drowsy eye open. Fernando was already worlds away from the balmy Japanese coast.

“…this myth begins with the mother of Eros. She was the goddess of loveliness, but grew jealous of a mortal girl’s beauty. Psyche was that girl’s name. The mother of Eros entrusted her son with Psyche’s violation and demise. Instead, Eros fell in love with the girl. They were married, though Psyche never saw her lifelong companion. He only visited her nightly and told her never to look upon his face. He slept at her side but was always gone by daybreak. Psyche’s resentful sisters convinced her that her husband was a beast, and, in order to save herself, to look upon him when he was sleeping. The following night Psyche, holding a candle above her husband’s head, looked upon her husband for the first time,”

Fernando touched the fold of his yukata thoughtfully; the gesture made no sense with the actions of the story, but it felt right to Fuu. It was like the breaking of Pscyhe’s heart—small, sudden, without words. Fernando continued:

“…he was no beast. He was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen. The tallow of the candle began to melt, and the hot wax burned first Psyche then Eros. Her husband departed from her in sorrow. She had broken her promise. Psyche then went on a long journey to restore herself to him, to restore the promise that was due, and eventually was made a goddess herself,”

Fuu sat, captivated. These western stories were so—she had no word for it. It was a good word. Jin could have supplemented that word—not sentimental, but something deeper than that. Fernando broke a little of the spell by clearing his throat.

“Their story is somewhat like one that came much later, when Europe was Europe and we told fairy tales more than we told myths. We took the land and the folk as out inspiration instead of the capricious gods. So Ero and Psyche became _la Bête et la Belle_. In a way,”

He had used words she did not understand, but somehow, they sounded right. Fernando now held up the illustration and circled the girl and the beast.

“A thing must first be loved before it is loveable. So Beauty must love the Beast of the castle in order to free him from his demons. She does not know that her love will restore his form or change him in any way. And—whether caused by jealousy, misunderstanding, violence, or despair--they both almost die for that cause,”

“That cause?”

“Oh, some call it eros, or agape, or just plain love—I tend to think it’s all three,”

Fernando’s thoughts had drifted—Fuu did not know there was more to the story, but Fernando had only left out the particulars, not the truths. Fernando placed the illustration between them and Fuu picked it up, tracing the edges of it while she stole glances at Fernando’s face. She guessed he was about to reveal the purpose of his visit.

“Shall we step outside?” he said, finally.

Etsu nodded at their leaving, insisted that they take a lantern. Fuu and Fernando strolled just far enough that only the crickets could hear them.

“Fuu,” said Fernando.

“Yes?”

Fernando folded his arms, hiding his hands in their opposite sleeves. He cleared his throat.

“Every day, I’ve told that young man to meet me in a certain clearing at a certain time,” said Fernando, “And every day I wait at the clearing and he doesn’t come,”

Fuu swallowed. “He won’t fight you?”

Fernando turned so Fuu could only see one side of his face. “If he doesn’t face me in a duel,” said Fernando, “I’ll have to let him kill me,”

“Kill you? Fernando—“ Fuu began, “Why?”

“These hands shouldn’t take life anymore,” Fernando said, "But neither should his,"

Fuu found herself trying to smile, to laugh a little, though she knew it wasn’t appropriate and she knew it wouldn’t help.

“What, Mugen?” she batted her hand, “Don’t worry about him. He’s used to death. He’s used to—“

Why was she crying? She swiftly regained her composure. When she looked at Fernando again he was facing her.

“He held back,” he said.

“What?”

“He held back, the first time—I know that now. I knew it then,”

“You’re—“ Fuu stared at a space over his shoulder, “You’re afraid he won’t hold back next time,”

“I don’t think he can. His hands are tied,”

“By what? Who? Nobody could ever tell Mugen what to do,”

“All men are held by something,”

“No. Not Mugen,”

Fernando’s steps began taking him back toward the house. “Forgive him for what I will allow him to do,”

*

Every evening Etsu would put away work for her clientele and would take up needle and thread to embroider the kimono she had labored over especially throughout that summer. Fuu was only allowed to see snippets at a time. This was typical of Etsu.

“Even I don’t know what the full meaning is until the work is done—and often I don’t know even then,” She would explain, slapping Fuu away every time she tried to peek.

Etsu put down her work to watch Fuu make her way through the sunflower field behind the house, making her way down to the beach. Etsu understood. Solitude was something they both knew how to navigate.

It wasn’t the brightest night. Things that were familiar in the day took on lonelier aspects. Fuu chose thoughts she had not rummaged through for some time. She thought about the end of her journey, about her companions, what they had told each other the last days on Ikitsuki Island.

Boys were so easy to talk to when they were tired. Like children; difficult and petulant but all the more willing to be fussed over.

Fuu sorted between the rocks and shells in her hand, keeping the shells and tossing the rocks into the waves. She loved the sound of the ocean. It sounded to her like the world was being scoured clean. 

Fuu thought of Mugen’s spirit more often than his body, and was safe with her thoughts of him because she knew that a little distance rubbed away the rough edges. It was only when she was with him that she realized the whole of him. Unsophisticated, irresponsible, damaged, and one foot in the grave. When she had known him, he had been so brutally young. It was love that you had to shape and look after. It did not always mean respect.

She wondered if he thought at all about their last night in the hut—it was dusk, and Jin may or may not have been asleep. Mugen had laid on his stomach, breathing as though he had access to very little air. Fuu had reached out her hand, but it stopped above his shoulder. She hesitated—but thought about the facts she knew. The fact that, in the time it took for bones to mend, they would leave this island and go their separate ways—and she didn’t know what promise could bind their futures together, no promise better than the one that had begun their journey: the flip of the coin and the scent of a foreign flower.

Fuu thought of her father dying and she had offered him no comfort. This was different. Mugen murmured something he would have only said in his sleep, in a deep fatigue, with too many bruises to count, too much ringing in his ears. “You can touch me,”

Nothing else—no puncture, no pretense.

She still hesitated, then rested her palm there, between his shoulder blades. His skin burned.

“Feels nice,” he said, then she was sure he fell asleep. That night she slept closer to him than she had ever dared, curled towards him like they could both shield one another, and it made her feel simple and clean and well-rested when she awoke.

It was waking up that morning that gave her peace for all the days to come. She did not know where such a gift of conscience came from. Her life had once been defined by absence, but this didn’t feel like absence at all.

Fuu now tossed the shells into the ocean and picked her way off the beach, back through the sunflowers. She was in time for evening to pull itself close around the house on the hill.

The scene was different when she entered. Fuu tried to place what it was. Etsu had gone to bed early. A light had been left burning. Fuu rushed over to blow out the lantern, thinking Etsu was becoming forgetful in her old age. That is when she noticed the kimono drawn out, sleeve to sleeve, for display on the wall.

It was finished. Fuu knew that Etsu had taken an older kimono so she had less alteration to complete. The design on the red silk was what had transformed the piece. Waves lapped up from the bottom, lit by a moon, a golden house between the two. The rest of the kimono was plain, with an obi matching the color used for the sea. Then Fuu saw she was mistaken. The sleeves were too short for her; this was a tomesode for Etsu. She probably had to make similar designs for both of their kimono, to save on materials and thread. Even so, Fuu was tempted to see if Etsu was still awake to tell her how much she loved the design.

She slid open the door to their sleeping compartment to see Etsu half-dozing by another lantern.

“Careful with these lanterns, Auntie,” Fuu chided good-naturedly, “That kimono is so beautiful—I had to catch my breath!”

Fuu laughed, seeing how pleased Etsu looked with herself. “Do you like it, really?” Etsu asked.

“Yes, you’re going to look simply beautiful in it,”

“Oh, it’s not for me,” said Etsu, yawning, “That one is yours,”

Fuu blushed. She didn’t want to have to correct Etsu, but perhaps Etsu had been making kimono for married women too long. It still seemed unlike her to forget the difference between furisode and tomesode.

Etsu looked at Fuu steadily. “It wasn’t a mistake,”

This caught Fuu off guard, but she tried to save face. “What mistake?”

“The sleeves,” Etsu continued, “It was part of the vision given to me. There was a golden house and you were married,”

Fuu attempted a smile. “Ah, is it a scene from a folk tale?”

Etsu pursed her lips, “I should have thought it would have that effect on you—but I can’t alter it. It wouldn’t be true, then,”

They were silent a moment. Fuu felt suffocated in the warm August air.

“Well,” said Fuu, swallowing, “Let’s blow out this light, shall we?”

She blew gently but the light went out in a snatch. Fuu chose not to think about this fact, that the light had blown out before her breath could have possibly reached it. She lay awake a long time, Etsu sleeping softly beside her. Fuu couldn’t feel anything else in the room, but she listened for footsteps on the roof, listened for birds.

Black wings crept into her heart, broke into her dreams. She clutched Mugen from behind, but even when she knew the black bird was diving for her she did not move. There, it broke through the flesh of her back and out Mugen’s chest—she’d finally come to the end of protecting him.

She didn’t question what she could protect him from; she didn’t question what was coming.

*

While Fuu kept her few prized possessions on a table out in the open, beneath the floorboards Fuu kept her practical items: nightclothes, the yukata she had repurposed for winter, the bandana and loincloth she wore for diving.

Waking before Etsu, Fuu met the fishermen’s daughters and wives as she did every morning.

These were the first friends that she had ever made in this town. When she had watched, interested, from the shore one day, one of the grannies had waved to her after they brought in their haul. They invited Fuu for a small meal and since Fuu had not been able to afford a bite to eat all that day, she was only too happy to take up the offer. They ate oysters from one another’s hands, carefully packed the abalone and seaweed. No pearls that day, but the ama told stories. The granny told her they could use all the strong young backs they could get.

Fuu hadn’t gone hungry since.

The routine of her life pleased her. She spent whole mornings out on the water, and could return in the afternoon and catch odd shifts at the tea shop. In the evenings, Fuu gleaned what she could from Etsu’s teachings. For the first time in her life she could spell out her own future with some certainty.

She was only too grateful for the routine that day. Fuu relished the cool water on her legs, her breasts. The ama gossiped and sang and laughed and returned to the beach, to their husbands who’d come by, as they did every day around the lunch break, to help with the day’s catch.

Fuu had been shy only the once, the first time she had worn the ama’s uniform. She thought nudity was only natural amongst other women, but when the men and young sons came they didn’t ogle her. She could hardly be singled out. She stood in a group of twenty women whose smiles were the most diverting thing about them. These were the bodies of fishermen’s wives—of course they would be healthy, of course they wouldn’t wear clothes that could snag on the rocks of the seabed. They did not cover themselves until the sun had dried their skin, and by then the haul was accounted for and the men were clapping their wives on the back and the grannies were congratulating Fuu on her hard work, seeing as she had no other family to do it for her.

“Fuu!” It was the newest girl. Fuu had seen her at the tea house from time to time, but she had only come to the town six months prior. She was the only one junior to her, but she had taken to the ama lifestyle marvelously fast. She was a tall, lithe girl—devastatingly beautiful, really.

“Yatsuha,” Fuu managed, before something was pressed into her hands.

Yatsuha smiled—her teeth were small and white, not one overlapped. Fuu had always wondered what her story was; she thought it might be similar to hers, having been raised a caste higher than the one she found herself in now.

“Open this one,” Yatsuha said. Fuu looked down at the blackened oyster in her hands. She took out the knife from the straps of her loincloth. Her favorite granny loitered nearby, mischief in her eyes. Fuu exchanged smiles with her. In one quick, practiced motion, the knife split the mouth of the oyster clean. Prodding at the precious meat, Granny and Yatsuha leaned close enough that the crowns of their heads touched.

“A pearl,” whispered Fuu.

“Your first, right?” Yatsuha asked. When Granny laughed she sounded like a little girl. She clapped Fuu on the shoulder.

Fuu shook her head, “I can’t take this,”

Granny pressed the pearl firmly into Fuu’s palm. “That’s the one you picked second before last, at the deepest part of the dive,” she said, “I always watch—I know. I had a feeling about it and I wanted to make sure that you were the one who opened it,”

“Please,” Fuu tried again, “Let’s split the money, at least,”

“Oh? Would you sell your first pearl?” asked Yatsuha.

Granny shook her head, “I admit I’m not that sentimental, but an unmarried young woman often finds these sorts of things good for their wedding,”

Fuu laughed instead of answering. “Thank you,” she said finally, “I’ll treasure it,”

She began to gather her things, the rucksack with the loose change of clothes, a place for the pearl. She still held the oyster in her hand, was trying to decide if she should save it for Etsu or not. Yatsuha escorted Granny off the beach. The crowd was thinning.

Then Mugen managed to sneak up on her.

It sounded like a bear had roared bloody murder right at her back, but Fuu was ready to strangle it.

“You!”

Fuu’s first instinct was to cover her shame and beat back his stupid, boyish laughter with righteous indignation. Instead, she turned to face him.

Mugen finished laughing, but he didn’t know where to look. Fuu watched the humor evaporate from his features, and in her victory she coolly bent down and retrieved the thin white yukata from her rucksack and draped it over herself. She didn’t bother with the obi, seeing as she had only a short walk up to Etsu’s house.

“Well?” Fuu almost smiled but stopped herself, told herself not to look too smug. Mugen’s brow furrowed. She saw he was pointing at the oyster in her hand.

“You gonna eat that?” he asked.

This question restored the easy familiarity between them.

“Try it,” Fuu said, shrugging. Mugen took the oyster in his hands, and in his typical fashion, dove head-first.

“Damn!” The rough edge of the shell had caught his lip. It began to bleed.

Fuu chuckled softly. “Here,” she took it back, fished out her knife again. Separating meat from shell, she held her palm out to Mugen.

“This is how we eat it, usually,” she offered. He started to look mischievous again, but he faltered in that too. Fuu expected him to just snatch the free lunch from her hand, but he didn’t. Instead he brought the hem of his shirt up to his mouth, wiped away the blood. He looked at her palm only a moment before deciding.

He roughly took her hand to steady it, his own fingers pressed reluctantly against her wrist, reluctant because it was unfamiliar, or--what? Fuu held her arm steady. His lips on her palm were quick, dry. He took it in one swallow. When Mugen pulled back Fuu resisted the urge to clasp her hand and stroke her palm with her thumb.

“Got any more?” He wiped off his mouth with his wrist.

“You gotta earn it,” Fuu said flatly.

“Alright,” He began to make a show of taking off his haori and pants, “I don’t have a fancy loincloth or anything though,”

Fuu ignored him, taking her rucksack in hand. “You’ll have better luck begging the waves to bring you dinner,”

She turned on her heels. What she really wanted to tell him, yell at him, was for him to leave, now that he was so healthy, or let her in on the secret of why he was here, but did she really want to know?

Because she did not know what she wanted to know, she said nothing. This is not how she had imagined their reunion, but she had always been careful not to over-romanticize that encounter either. She sighed to herself, thinking that one of these days she’d be old enough and wise enough to pine for a less impossible man.

*

He watched the folds of her yukata, caught in the wind. She climbed the hill, spoils in hand, disappeared. He knew where to find her but he wasn’t going to look. Yatsuha found him that way, his hands in his pockets, ocean forgotten at his feet.

She was dressed for work, clothing dark, without much friction. It was her second skin. “Doing a little reconnaissance on your own today, huh?” she asked, pulling her hair back.

She deftly avoided Mugen’s groping advances.

“Ah-ah, we’re not married anymore, remember?”

Mugen’s hands dropped easily. “Yeah, I know,”

Yatsuha laughed. “So it’s her,”

He began walking like he hadn’t heard her. She strolled calmly behind, clasping her hands behind her back. “I’m glad,” she said.

Mugen sounded bored when he spoke. She could feel him rolling his eyes, “Come on—we both found out I’m not that kinda guy,”

“No,” she amended, “We just weren’t those kind of people,”

Mugen scratched the back of his head, “I still like you, you know. It’s weird,”

“Oh, I like you more than I can say,”

“But we’re not screwing,”

“No—aren’t you relieved?”

“The opposite, actually,”

Yatsuha began to round on him. She’d come here to discuss, without actually using any words, what their express purpose here was. The distance in his eyes told her it wasn’t necessary—rather, it wouldn’t do any good. His mind was a million miles away.

“Well,” she quipped, “It’s good for some of your blood to travel up instead of down sometimes, you know,”

She now stood in front of him. She brought a finger up to her dimple. “If I said you could take me now, you wouldn’t,”

Mugen spat. “Bull,”

“Come on, Mugen, face it—we’re friends now,”

“Feh,”

“You may want things, Mugen, but you always want _someone._ And I'm not it,"

Mugen groaned. 

“Women think too much,” his shoulders brushed past her, “No—they just talk too much,”

He felt a knife at his left kidney and this slowed his pace; he knew when Yatsuha was kidding, but he also knew her sense of humor was sharp in more ways than one.

“Mugen,” she purred, “Let’s relay the evidence,”

Her hand, strong for being so small-boned, still held a firm grip on his shoulder. She retracted her knife, whistling as she flipped it end over end.

“First, you’re allowing someone to tell you what to do,” said Yatsuha, “And second, you’re denying yourself. Which, we both now, isn’t in your nature,”

He scoffed, and his grin would have fooled anybody but her.

“Mugen,” she said again, “You don’t have to go through with this,”

He began walking again, taking long strides now, “Then what have we been doing all this time?”

Yatsuha kept pace, “This is bigger than both of us,”

He was quiet.

She sighed, repeated herself, “You don’t have to do this,”

They didn’t talk much after that. Yatsuha thought about holding onto his arm, just companionably—that’d never happen. She wished she could tease him when he got like that, but in his own way he was thinking. Yatsuha still admired him, in a lonely sort of way, when he got that way. The smile she wore was genuine, though. She was glad they were friends.

*

Fernando waited in the clearing. The shape of the silver cross was pressing itself into the palm of his hand. He did not expect nor did he want this symbol to protect him. He wanted to remind himself of two things: the beauty of death, the waste of death. The hills of Golgotha had been that in spades. His own death would water this clearing and that was all. He was an old man, he knew both the weight and absence of his sins. He was ready. But the boy didn’t come.

The boy picked out a wooden stake instead. It had rolled away from the crucifix display, stopped at Mugen’s feet. Even he knew a sign when he saw one.

The boy placed the stake in his pocket.

The priest wrapped the cross once more around his neck.

And the girl placed the pearl in the drawer by the illustration of _la Bête et la Belle._


	4. [Moonlight]

IV. [Moonlight]

 _my blue bucket of gold_ _  
lord, touch me with lightning_

**-Gallant + Sufjan Stevens, “Blue Bucket of Gold”**

*

Days lasted long in August. When Etsu went to meet the woman at the tea shop, evening still allowed fingers of sunlight to fall on their corner table.

Fuu caught them in the last half hour of her shift, even served them dumplings and tea before she turned in her apron for the day. She thought that Etsu’s client was a beautiful woman. Though her features were plain they were healthy and clean—her eyes may not have been luminous or her face round, but her porcelain skin belonged to a lady above her caste. Not a hair was out of place, and her lavender kimono looked priceless. Fuu also had a strange feeling that had not been translated into her language in that century, but if she had known it, she would have called it _déjà vu._  

Etsu and the woman spoke low, their voices lively with gossip. If anybody had been trying to eavesdrop, however, they would have been hard-pressed in doing so. Much was said across the tabletop. Hands scattered over fabric samples. Etsu pulled out spools of thread. The woman across from her shifted the samples, but not into a conceivable order (visions such as Etsu’s weren’t so much conceivable as they were understandable).

Overlapping waves, color of turquoise. _The ocean._

A fleet of feathers, though they cut diagonal. _Ill omen._

A roof of reeds. _Something unfinished._

A bird she could not identify. _An unexpected ally._

A bellflower in the moonlight; five leaves on each side of the stem, five white petals. _Lovers._

_“This one,”_

Etsu tipped her eyes upward; the voice had been masculine. A distinct voice—the cadence was off in its own world, even and cold. He looked like a ronin, but the straw hat obscured his eyes. He picked up the final sample; Etsu had not finished it. She had begun a design of that foreign flower that now populated the hill. Sunflowers, Fuu called them. 

The woman looked up at the man like she had been expecting him, “There you are, Jin,”

The man’s face was severe, porcelain—my, but he looked like Etsu’s first love, long before she was married. Etsu looked kindly at him. Curious—there were slight divots at the bridge of his nose, as though he’d once worn spectacles like a Dutchman.

The ronin named Jin placed the sunflower sample back on the table.

“Is she in danger?” Etsu asked,“That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it?”

Her friend smiled.

“This young woman is important to my husband,” she said, gathering the samples into a sizeable coin purse, “It’s thanks to her that we ever met at all,”

“Life is strange like that” Etsu began, looking between them. 

The woman began to stand and Etsu placed her hands on the table.

“Shino,” said Etsu.

Shino paused, Jin’s hand around her wrist.

“She’s important to me too,” Etsu took her hands back, and when she looked at them she realized how old she had lived to be. She took a deep breath.

“I’ve never had so many dreams for another person in my life—but none of the visions have any endings. I don’t know what that means,”

Shino sat back down. She took the sunflower sample from the coin purse and gave it back to Etsu.

“You and I,” Shino said, “Are only textile merchants, and only women. And she is only a just a woman herself. This is a world where the only guarantees are death and birth. But we’re all a part of some strange destiny, wouldn’t you say? Somehow, my own life ended up a fairy tale—and my life went on after the fairy tale too. So no, I don’t think this is the end,”

Etsu really was getting old—since she was a girl, she had only cried at her wedding, but here she was crying again. When Shino offered comfort, Etsu shook her head and insisted they should go and do their part quickly.

“What will you do?” Shino asked. 

“First, I'll finish my tea,” said Etsu, "And then, I'll head to the sanctuary."

"No," said Jin, "It's too dangerous,"

"Well, that's why you're here, right?"

"I can't promise that I can protect you," said Jin, sadly. 

Etsu winked at him. "My boy, you really do remind me of my first love!"

She laughed out loud, trying to outdo the sound of her own heart beating too quick.

 

*

The summer night began to deepen when Fuu slid the door slightly closed between the sleeping and living area. Moonlight fell at her feet. She was combing her hair; she hummed a song she’d learned from her travels. The frogs croaked from underneath the house, a comforting sound. There was never any fear in this place. Again she imagined the ocean, the cool sea mist at her neck. Something moored her to that spot in the house. In a moment, she knew.

She had just begun pinning her hair back up when she heard the entrance slide open. Sandals were kicked carelessly to the side. Fuu’s heart only began to clang when there was a pause between the entrance and the shape outside the sliding door. With it partially open, she could make out the familiar knee, the branded ankle worrying itself in a tight circle.

Fuu turned herself away, closed her yukata, and waited. She could not move.

The sound of the door sliding open. Fuu’s head moved without her permission and she stopped midmotion. She straightened her spine. Her dignity wasn’t saved by her hair falling loose from tired combs, and she didn’t try to pin it back up. And outside all was quiet—the frogs, the cicada, the wind, the ocean.

She could hear him breathing, and he sounded just as nervous as she was.

He kneeled behind her. He smelled like salt, only salt. She had known him on their journey to smell of other things: onions and fish, death, women’s perfume, fresh blood, old blood, sake and disregard. This time he smelled scrubbed of all but the smell he was born with: coarse and straightforward salt.

She hazily remembered that morning and touched the palm of her hand; the unreality of that moment made it seem like the kind of memory that’s made-up, wishful thinking, strange dreams.

“Good evening,” she said, and surprised herself at the new tenor of her voice.  

He didn’t answer her. He found the edge of her sleeve and held onto the silk hem but made no other advance. She wanted to know what kind of expression he had, but she still sat with her back to him, looked only at the bars of moonlight now scraping over her shoulder to get to the wall.

She did not know what she wanted. So she waited, and her legs fell asleep.

She adjusted, embarrassed that she knew nothing else to do. The silk fell away from Mugen’s hand and he placed his other on the wall, his arm brushing against Fuu’s shoulder.

She turned to face him. There was the grin she had imagined. When her hands came up, cradling his head, the grin stayed for show. What was that expression?

She found her fingers tracing the soft flesh beneath his eyes.

“You little—“ Mugen looked annoyed, “Don’t make this hard on me,”

He turned around for something he had laid down on the floor so silently that Fuu had not noticed. He placed it in Fuu’s hands. It was just a rough piece of wood—a stake, if she wasn’t mistaken.

“I don’t understand,” she said. He looked annoyed by this answer. He took it back from her, lifted one finger to indicate that she watch carefully, and lifted his arm high, like he was about to ram it straight through the tatami. He stopped just short, and Fuu simply stared at the coin-sized shadow formed underneath the stake.

“Here, take it,” Mugen tossed it and Fuu caught it. Her eyes didn’t waver from where the shadow had been.

“I’m building a house,” Mugen said, absently scratching the side of his nose, “I need you to pick the spot. Hills are good. Water’s a must. Just don’t be dumb enough to pick a beach or something,”

She did not answer him for a long time.

From his silence, she saw that she had guessed what he’d been too cowardly to ask. All this roundabout sidestepping—all his childish ways of keeping thoughts to himself. It was endearing. She also guessed—and there was a slight edge of sake to him—that he was drunk. He wouldn’t be creating this scenario if he wasn’t feeling uncharacteristically pleasant.

The longer she remained silent, the more fragile the silence became. She placed the stake back on the floor, equidistant between them. There, the silence was different now, it shifted from one side of the room to the other. Even the evening heat had cooled. Fuu shook her head, seeing no way around the question she had to ask. Her next words would have to move around sharp objects, but she didn’t know where to go—she didn’t know what exactly had broken.

 “How can you and I pretend like that?” she asked.

The years he had spent apart from her were his own and she saw him shutting those back up and she felt she had lost something. She looked up at him.

His eyes were closed.

She felt betrayed by the sudden presence of tears. They slipped from her eyelashes two at a time.

“What are you even doing here? You didn’t even come here because of me!” She turned away again and just said what she wanted, because she expected him to leave half-way through, “Where would the money come from—your affair with carpentry? You’d just run away when you got bored. Even good men have their mistresses, but I’d spend my nights pretending you weren’t at brothels. You really want to shame me with a life like that?”

She was farther now than she ever had been from she thought was her most laughable hope. She was terrified, and here was her box of secrets. All except one. That death still clung to him, and she would have to mourn that—sooner or later.

He stood. The cloud covered the moon so that it was complete blue darkness in the house on the hill.

“My bad,” he said, “I just thought you were lonely here or something,”

He left the house in three strides. Her heart finally began to slow, leaving a dull ache in her throat.

She heard a few words she’d never heard before, though their meaning was clear enough. He circled the house, muttering, before she could hear him take off towards the beach. When she left the house she followed Mugen’s trail through the mutilated sunflowers. It was dark, the clouds still covering the moon, and she tripped twice.

She yelled his name down the strip of the beach, but still his back moved farther in the distance. His legs unsteady in the sand, arms slurring. Fuu scampered down the rocks, slid onto her shin, winced. When she looked up she saw Mugen had stopped only a moment to turn around and look at her. The grin on his face was hard but when he made the motion to laugh, he stopped, and turned his back on her again. She gathered herself, in time to see him strip off his jacket and wade into the ocean. He fought against the high, choppy tide. He had forgotten his shoes. So had she.

“Idiot!” she yelled over the roar.

He yelled nothing back.

She climbed back up the rocks and watched him from her perch. He swam to where the water could carry him in a moonlit lull, and Fuu was surprised at the equipoise. She decided she was glad that he was angry. She could take the coltish side of Mugen; she knew it.

“I’m coming in!” she called. The tide was even now a little higher, but sweet as Fuu waded out into the water. She hesitated before taking off the outer layer of her yukata. She waded, looking like a _yuki-onna_ beneath the waves. She was a good swimmer. She joined Mugen past the tide to where the ocean only tugged them gently up and down. Mugen lay on his back, hands entwined on his stomach. She kicked to stay afloat, watching him from the side.

“You’re stirring up sharks, dumbass,” he said.

“I have a proposition,” she said.

Mugen turned on his stomach then and took several powerful strokes in the opposite direction.

“I don’t know what you heard back there,” he said over his shoulder, “But stop acting like it meant something, aight?”

Fuu caught up with him. He swam doggedly on, turning them in circles. Fuu kept this up a few minutes but finally admitted defeat and began making her way back to shore.

She could feel Mugen swimming in slowly behind her. She adjusted her pace. For a few breaths, it was the water moving around them. She could feel a light touch on the trail of her clothing, then it was gone.

She turned on him at the last moment.

“Listen,” she said. Their expressions at that moment were probably identical. Each of them set their brow and narrowed their eyes.

“Just forget whatever it is you came here for,” Fuu said, “And ask me that question again tomorrow,”

Mugen spat behind him, wiping his mouth as he turned to her. “What question?”

“Coward!” she cried, “You don’t know what you want!”

Fuu winced. Mugen’s hand had made the motion to slap her, but the gesture crumbled and when he saw the fear in her face he looked like he truly loathed her. What was that expression?

He swam closer, grabbed her by the waist. She was going to claw his face, but her resolve melted when he did absolutely nothing.

“What do you see?” he asked.

She didn’t understand. He’d never frightened her like this.

She gave up, shaking her head, “I don’t know,”

He grinned. His eyes were large and black.

“That’s nothing new,”

He let go of her then, the water still deep enough that she dunked under and there was saltwater up her nose and she came up coughing. By the time she made it to shore he was already up the cliffside and the tide buffeted Fuu from side to side. She arrived at the house cold and exhausted, sticky with salt. Her nose stung with it. So the last thing she would do was cry.

*

When Etsu came to the Widower's house, there was someone in the garden.

Etsu remembered what the Widower had been like before he was the Widower. He had been a handsome man when she was a girl, but spent most of his adult life in the city three days to the south. In those days he carried swords at his belt. His wife had been plain, but nobody would have denied she was a lady. She had that air in her walk, in her voice, she had light in her eyes.

Etsu still remembers the day she was asked to make a kimono for the Lady. She had nearly died from joy. When she set about to begin the piece, however (she had imagined something bold, something yellow, something the Lady had never worn before but she would make it look like it had been made to be worn by her and nobody else), Etsu had been struck with a grief so dry and hollow she could not even cry. It was a clear vision. The Lady wasn’t dying, not of sickness, or of childbirth, or of old age, but she was going to die. This was going to be her funeral kimono.

Etsu entered the garden. She had not seen the Widower for many years, but he recognized her.

“Etsu,”

She knew his real name, and when he heard it, the Widower lost his perpetual smile.

Etsu watched him turn his head—he really was so different now, so much smaller. His mouth opened, she counted the teeth he had lost, and that mouth remained opened. His was a silent cry.

“Why do I see blood here?” Etsu asked him, “Why do I see so many threads ending murkily, here, of all places? I thought you were a holy man now. I thought you had retired,”

“This is the sanctuary afforded to me,” said the Widower, forgetting his real name again, smiling softly to replace that memory.

Etsu’s eyes went wide, not because she understood what was meant by the Widower’s words, but because, standing here where the visions had led, she could feel the pulse of the future and see it take more distinct shape.

“You’ve been planning to betray the shogunate,” she said, unable to care for her physical safety when the truth came upon her, “You did not build this church out of faith but out of bloodlust,”

“I don’t care about that,” the man spat, “Just as God doesn’t care for the stink of cattle in his sacrifices. It is making things right that counts. That is the definition of sacrifice. An acceptable sacrifice. Making things right,”

Etsu shook her head. The tears she would have cried on finding out the Lady’s fate, her memory of what happened to her, her pity for this man who had once been beautiful in body and soul, this man her secret first love, the tears already released by her love for the daughter of her old age—the tears came.

“You’ll betray your own wife’s convictions, the faith she died for,” Etsu just kept up that monotonous motion, shaking her head back and forth, back and forth, “You would stain your name,”

“There’s nothing to stain. My name is forgotten,”

His wife had become even lovelier after her conversion. It was an open secret. The Lady did not like lies, even white ones. She did little to protect herself from even innocent rumors. Word spread, and one day, on a day just like in Etsu’s visions—open, bright, white, at the height of summer—they came and they did as they did with all the other Christians. She received no special treatment, despite her husband’s occupation. They made her a living crucifix.

Etsu could not walk by that church, that ground, could not see that symbol without feeling haunted. A living crucifix.

Etsu continued shaking her head back and forth, answered the Widower.

“Not by me—never,”

The Widower had moved closer, was faster than Etsu could have anticipated.

“I can make certain of it,” he whispered.

Etsu would remember it as a swift gesture.

She woke with a near-perfect bruise on her abdomen in a dark room. Fresh grief, that.

She was too old for this, but she knew too that she wasn’t so dangerous to the Widower’s designs. She would not be disturbed here. She could still do her work.

She sat and willed for clearer visions of what was to come and how to change it in the children’s favor. How she would help once she saw what had to be done, Etsu wasn’t sure.

She still fought through tears—the danger of not crying for so long, she thought, but the funny thing was the more she released that unforgivable emotion the clearer the visions became. There were places inside her that had been stopped up—by her refusal to love her husband, by her stoically denying the Widower’s real name, by her turning a blind eye to that foreign man and his foreign religion and even her own household shrine—by grieving over these things, even if she wasn’t thinking about them directly, there was light thrown on shadowy places in her mind, and out of those came a thousand threads of the immediate future.

 

*

Fuu was ashamed of her dreams that night. Mugen was naked in them. She clung to him while he melted like hot wax across her shoulder, faded as her hands parted through him like so much unwanted smoke. She herself changed, as dreamers often do, and she alighted a branch and looked down upon Mugen again. She wasn’t used to seeing men crying, and when she awoke she realized that Mugen hadn’t really been crying (Mugen probably hadn’t cried since the day he was born), but the way he had drowned in the ocean made her think that his soul held every sorrow he’d never released—it was his strength—his unnatural strength—his soul like the sea. And Fuu, wings in a frenzy, climbed from branch to branch trying to escape the rising tide.

She woke with a start, still feeling the disgusting wash of last night. It was early morning. She had only managed a few hours of sleep. Fuu bathed in the river and did not go down to the ocean at sunrise.

She busied herself. Did her sums—her savings were modest. She tempted herself by looking under the tatami mats, staring briefly at the red kimono. She wasn’t a child anymore. She wasn’t going to imagine he could want her and only her. She had long ago made peace with his already impossible friendship. His kindness she knew, even if he didn’t.

The last six weeks of their journey had been her favorite, because she lived with the fact of it. He was calmer—still Mugen, but with a center, expanding. His heart was a little bigger, and he didn’t say so many stupid things. He didn’t offer things expressly, he just didn’t take as many things for himself first and foremost. Those last weeks they still starved a little, gambled a little, drank a little, Mugen still got into scraps and Jin still didn’t start conversations; but they understood one another now. She tended to their wounds and helped them pick out new clothes, and though Fuu apologized to Jin profusely, she had apologized to Mugen only the once. That was all he allowed.

She had been inspecting the fracture in his arm (in another time, she might have become a doctor), when she finally found the courage to break the silence.

“Mugen,” she said, and he became alert to the tone in her voice, “I can’t thank you enough. You and Jin. You—you’ve saved me a lot, haven’t you? I’m sorry,”

Mugen slapped his bruised hand on his bruised knee, “Don’t make me sorry for being a man,”

Fuu didn’t speak. There was pride in his eyes.

Jin chose east, Mugen flowed west, Fuu went north-west. Some days she carefully avoided paths where they might, presumably, cross paths again—she went by an inner compass that told her when it was right to show up in someone’s life again. The nights when loneliness visited her (and it visited her even when the three of them traveled together, so she knew not to put too much stock in it), she did contemplate more elaborate plans to circumvent fate and track them down. In the morning, her compass would be restored. Other days she did choose paths, go by rumors, casually ask about a specific ronin or a wild-haired man with tattoos. Often it was enough just to hear an inkling of a rumor.

It felt right that she met Jin first. The first time she saw him he looked so completely unchanged. She wished they had been born in the same household, so she could always call him brother. They pooled together their funds and enjoyed udon, shrimp, matcha. He’d led her here. When she thought to look for him, it was just his legend she found, and she’d smiled at his happiness.

She missed her family, but she wasn’t a child anymore. She had repeated that to herself so often until she met Etsu.

 It was mid-morning when Fuu began to wonder when Etsu might return. As she waited in silence, she began to steel herself with a late but hearty breakfast. She would have to go by the church; that’s where Etsu said she’d be.

It was a pale yellow morning, even this close to noon. A shapeless sheet of clouds promised rain, and Fuu carried her paper umbrella while collecting dew at the hem of her yukata. She thought about how much of her life had happened on this stretch of road. Once her life had bobbed along the entire expanse of Japan, but now she had years’ worth of memories just walking this road back and forth. To think Etsu had spent her entire life here and the city that was three days to the south. Fuu thought about how you to stay in a place long enough to appreciate its music, its smell. That’s how Fuu knew the scent of sunflowers; it was her entire childhood.

Fuu thought she would take a different path one day, through wild bush or down a different beach, just to get to know this place for the first time again. For now, in the strange half-light of day, she saw all the shapes and shadows like a yolk-and-robin’s-egg dream. It was a nice trick to play on herself. She smiled a little, her spirit elevated.

She was only weighed down by two regrets in her life, though she realizes the heaviness she’d been lifting all that morning was from her a third. Before, she had only regretted being unable to forgive her father and unable to choose Jin. She almost brought it up to Jin that last time they met, when they both had come to the end of the road but it still seemed like they had a dozen things to talk about. She deliberately chose not to talk about Mugen instead.

This third regret was simply the result of these vices: that she found it easy to forgive but difficult to hope, and more difficult to choose. No, she always had. Over and over, even if she was reluctant. When she walked away from her two companions without looking back, she knew whatever she felt was not so transparent or fleeting as that.

She had quickened her pace, but had only just now noticed it was raining. The umbrella was unopened in her hand.  She nearly fell under the eaves of the Widow’s house, but she steadied herself against the outer garden wall and rested her head on the damp wood.

That’s when it decided to downpour. Fuu held her hands out, watching the drops come off her fingertips, watched her hands like they were someone else’s hands. They were pretty. She had her mother’s hands.

Fuu heard a trowel at work in the garden. She turned and opened the little gate.

“Sir,” she said, spotting the little bent figure, “Why are you working in the rain?”

The Widower turned to see Fuu smiling gently at him. He rubbed his palm against his forehead.

“Sometimes I prefer it,” he said, sheepishly, “The rain feels good on this aching back,”

“I was looking for—“

“They went out into the clearing not too long ago,” said the Widower. Once Fuu heard the words, her plans changed. She could not alarm the old man, so she merely bowed and thanked him. She made her way out of the garden, did not begin to run until she was out of sight. She left the paper umbrella to soak irreparably in the grass.

It was mindless running. It was something to do. It was what she had to do—get there as fast as her legs could carry her. Save them both—with words or earnestness or sheer will. She didn’t give herself a choice. She only ran faster.

When she saw him coming up the hill covered in blood she lost her center of gravity; it simply rolled down to her ankles. Still she ran as straight and true as she could. It was then she noticed that he was also running toward her. He was waving his arms. He was shouting.

“Get out! Get out of here!”

She slowed up, breathing ragged. He crossed the rest of the distance in no time at all.

“How’d you ditch Yatsuha?” Mugen demanded.

“Yatsuha? How do you know Yatsuha?”

“Damn it,” He looked behind him, peered in the distance. Fuu wanted to ask what was wrong, but all she could do was stare at the blood on his grey shirt.

“It’s alright, Mugen,” Fuu said, not looking at Mugen directly, “He said this would happen,”

“This ain’t his blood,”

Now Fuu did look at him.

“Then whose blood?”

“There’s agents for the shogunate all over this place,” said Mugen, “Tailing that priest,”

“You…protected him?”

“They caught us off guard,”

“What are agents of the shogunate doing here?”

“What do you think? This place is crawling with Christians, remember?”

“But why now? Fernando has been here for years,”

“Got a few snakes in the grass,”

“Someone in the church,”

“Someone in that house, that’s for sure,”

Fuu did not fully process what he meant by that, for it was then she saw Fernando in the distance. She almost called to him, but instead she covered her mouth. The priest walked with a limp, but something in his walk was triumphant. He crossed the distance, slow but steady, though his voice was still winded by the time he caught up to Mugen's shoulder. 

“Fuu, you’ve got to get out of here,” Fernando said.

“Mugen,” Fuu looked back and forth between the two men, “ I still don’t understand what all of this has to do with _you_ ,”

“I got him mixed up in this,” said Fernando. One of his eyes were swollen shut. “When I first came here to Japan, I had a mission on the islands south of here. The kingdom of Ryukyu—“

“—there’s no time, gramps,” said Mugen, “Tell that story on the run,”

They did begin to move then, but Fernando paced himself so Fuu could hear him. “I didn’t treat them as people. I poured water over their heads and learned to speak their language and burned their pagan symbols, but I didn’t know them. I didn’t care to understand. It wasn’t until I realized they were dying of a disease my people had brought to their island that I ever despaired for their souls. I had done nothing for them. I had killed them. It was something I swore I would never do again, but this time I had done it not in service of a king—but of God,”

There was a chicken coop a good distance from the house, surrounded by brambles. Mugen moved to the back of the coop, scanning the perimeter. Fuu and Fernando huddled close beside him.

Mugen wiped away blood from a cut at his brow, “I didn’t come here for revenge or anything,”

It seemed he was speaking more to Fernando than Fuu. Fernando looked surprised.

“I came here with agents from Edo Castle,” said Mugen, “Call it a contract with an old friend. The fact that you were the one who killed off one village in the whole of Ryukyu ain’t any skin off my teeth. It just helped me hate you, which was good. I hadn’t hated anything in a long time—it’s hard to kill without hate,”

The sound of footsteps made them all stiffen, but the footsteps retreated, and they relaxed somewhat. It was still a reminder that they didn’t have much time. Mugen continued, hastily.

“But then we realized you were just a scapegoat. You’re one kind of enemy of the shogunate, but the one we were looking for was a traitor. Big difference,”

Mugen suddenly took Fuu, hard, by the shoulder.

“Stay here,” he said, “Yatsuha’s going to get you and explain. You got anything sharp for the mean time?”

Fuu produced her tanto. It seemed she just took it by instinct these days.  

Mugen gave Fernando the same instructions and then was gone without another warning. Fuu gripped the sheath of the tanto close to her chest and felt the anger in her hands. Fernando looked at her, at her hands.

“So,” Fuu said, “He’s some big-shot government agent now, huh? Can’t he stay away from danger for even just a second?”

But it was one reason she loved him, she figured.

“Ferunando-sensei,” Fuu stood up, turned to Fernando. He began to get up as well, made a move to stop her.

“You’re a good man, Ferunando-sensei,” Fuu said, about to run for it.

“It’s dark,” said Fernando, and his voice stopped her. She listened. “But only because of the rain. I can’t tell you how many people are swarming that house, but there’s shadows and there’s the shogunate and then there are the Widower’s people. I can’t be sure that any of them will look after you. And what can you do to help that boy?”

Fuu folded herself around her knees again.

“Just wait,” said Fernando, “Give it time,”

So they did wait, huddled in the brambles of the chicken coop, listening to the rain drum on the thatch roof and the muddy slope.

“Etsu—did she come last night?” Fuu finally asked.

Fernando shook his head, “I don’t know,”

A shadow descended from on high. The figure, two other black-clad guards at either shoulder, knelt before Fuu. She removed her mask just enough that Fuu could recognize her.

“Yatsuha,” Fuu whispered. Yatsuha winked.

Fuu pressed, “Is Mugen alright? Have you seen an old woman? Etsu?”

Yatsuha’s face was solemn, but there was a glimmer in her eyes. “It’s all over now. The seer was the one who warned us, gave us the vision,”

Palpable relief rushed through Fuu’s body. She stiffened again.

“And Mugen? Is Mugen okay?”

“He’s in the church sanctuary,”

Fuu rushed off before any could reprimand her. Yatsuha could have subdued Fuu if she thought it necessary, but she left her arms at her side. She replaced her mask and stretched her aching limbs. It had been quick work.

She was helping the priest stand to his feet when the arrow grazed her shoulder, pierced the companion behind her. Yatsuha had only begun to comprehend when the bulk of the priest slumped forward into her arms.

Bitterness tasted like blood in her mouth. She’d been wrong. They’d all miscalculated. What had slipped their attention? What had slithered from their grasp?

Her second companion threw the knife that downed the archer, but Yatsuha couldn’t be sure that two men hadn’t just died on her watch. She cursed.

 _I just sent that girl into a snakes’ den_.

*

Fuu was afraid to enter the sanctuary. The house was quiet with the aftermath of something Fuu didn’t entirely understand. Sher realized she had been keeping her sight out for blood, her scent out for that metallic afterburn. What waited for within the sanctuary scared her more completely. It might not even be the right time for her to enter and say what she had to say, given the circumstances. She also knew it was the only time. And she was a samurai’s daughter, so she finally slid open the door.

He stood beneath the blocks of stained light, sword at his back. The rain rumbled and turned into the beginning of a storm. Mugen didn’t acknowledge her presence as she walked towards him, and he even let her get so close that her breath disturbed the fabric of his shirt. Her mouth came just below his shoulder blade. It was a strange geographical fact and she pounced on it, to give back her center of gravity. Here she was. Here he was. What was he thinking? Was he praying? Angry? At peace?

“I can do what I want,” he whispered in that way of his that she wished he wasn’t. It diffused too many of the things he was and was trying to be, or could be, or probably should be. She walked around to where she faced him now. She didn’t think he’d look at her, but his eyes were dead for a moment even as they looked over her face. It sent a shiver between her shoulders.

His knuckles traced her jaw, and the calluses there were hard and irritating, but it was a gentleness she hadn’t expected. His fingers trembled slightly and they both saw. He wretched his hand away.

She grabbed his sleeve.

“Let go,” he said.

“Ask me that question again,” Fuu just said it, all misgivings aside.

“Touch me again—”

She grabbed onto his arm. She had let him go before, and that had been a mistake. Now she was angry and ashamed and she wasn’t going to let him run away from that if she could help it.

Mugen growled.

“Go on,” said Fuu, “Do what you want. Snap me like a twig. This is nothing to you. But I won’t let go on my own. Not until you ask me that question again,”

“What is this?” he spat, “Some kinda foreplay?”

“You’ve never touched me,” Fuu whispered, but she traced her jaw in remembrance.

“I said _I can do what I want_ ,”

“I know you can,” Fuu laughed, tears hitting Mugen’s burning knuckles. He pulled his arm away and Fuu fell. Quickly, without rising all the way, she grabbed onto his leg.

“What in the literal hell?”

“Ask me that question again!”

“No other man’ll have you now, you know,”

“You’re an idiot. I won’t let you go until you ask me that question,”

“Stand up—unless you want me to keep staring down your yukata,”

Fuu did stand up then, wrapping her arms around Mugen’s waist and pressing her face against his chest and it all seemed so much like a little girl refusing to say goodbye to her father or something. Mugen yanked on a tuft of her hair but there wasn’t too much force behind it. He took a deep breath. She smelled like rivers and rice bran and those herbs you can sometimes pick to put in hot baths. She smelled faint and natural, not like perfume, but like sunflowers—you had to get real close to them to know they even had a scent.

“If I really wanted you to stick around,” said Mugen, “I could just make it where you couldn’t run away,”

Mugen, for his part, knew he was powerless. He could easily pick her up and carry her on his shoulder, but that wasn’t right—this wasn’t that kind of scene. He could bruise her wrists and make her fall to her knees and make his escape. He’d done that plenty of times before when the girls got clingy. Mugen looked at Fuu, her skin blocks of blue and red and purple from the stained glass. His hand crushed against her head. She straightened; she wasn’t even shaking. The girl had spine.

“Pain in the ass!”

He could feel Fuu’s breath against his chest. She was laughing. He wanted to strangle her. Somehow his hands came to her shoulders instead. His body had known it a long time ago, but he had to grow a heart to match pace. Now here she was burning him up outside in, and it made him feel like a goddamn immortal.

He gripped her around the waist with one arm, pinning her to his side. Fuu caught her breath; she remembered the way he had held her at the beach. She looked up at him but realized that his anger was pointed in the direction of the sliding door.

“Mugen,” Fuu said with difficulty, as Mugen squeezed tighter against her back to shut her up, “That’s just the—the Widower,”

“Yeah, then who are the fives bastards at the back?” Mugen said this loud enough for the listener on the other side of the room to hear. Fuu took stock of her surroundings again.

“Or the three birdies on the roof?” continued Mugen, “And those two behind that shoji there?”

Fuu looked at the Widower. Age had shrunk him to her height, and his head was so wrinkled and large and bland that she had always thought of him rather like a child than a man old enough to be her father’s grandfather. His smile was the same as always, but then there were the two men appearing from behind the sliding door.

“Ah,” He had one of those voices that sounded like he was about to fall apart at any minute. The Widower reached behind him for a set of swords that one of the young men had been carrying for him. Settling it around his waist, the man inhaled deeply. Fuu could feel the change in atmosphere. The bones of Mugen’s forearm were sharp, pressing into her back. She didn’t make a sound.

“I hate it when they get women involved,” the Widower smiled kindly at no one in particular, but then his eyes fell upon Mugen, “You must be a devil for it. And you chose a holy place the two of you to die—but you won’t be so different from wife then, will you? Why should you get any better than my poor wife got from those shogunate bastards?”

The Widower’s laugh was a dry bark and nothing more. His sword came to so quickly that Fuu didn’t trust her eyes; the rain roiled outside, and she thought maybe she’d seen a glimpse of lightening. She did not have much time to process in the first place. Mugen moved with Fuu still firmly at his waist, choosing to incapacitate his left arm. Fuu felt the actual force that went through his body when he struck at the Widower. Mugen’s attack was easily dodged.

“Mugen, let go of me,” said Fuu, “You can’t fight like this,”

Mugen’s right arm took the brunt of the Widower’s next attack, holding his sword up, shock going straight to his shoulder. He slid on his heels, finally fell and Fuu toppled with him. He reached out for her by instinct but she rolled herself away. He looked back at her but Fuu saw the Widower’s next attack before he did. She took a bucket that had been placed strategically for catching rainwater and flew it, contents and all, at the Widower’s face. He backed away, cursing at the indignity of this style of fighting. Fuu then pressed herself up against the wall, shook her head at Mugen.

“Fight,” she told him. He grit his teeth, but quickly pulled at the grasp of his sword, released the hidden dagger there and made sure it landed at her feet. He jumped to his feet only to meet the Widower blade for blade again.

“Now, young man,” said the Widower, “Do you know who I am?”

“They call you a Garden Keeper,” Mugen spat, “Or something queer like that,”

The Widower knocked him off balance, but Mugen’s windmill came to the rescue. The cut fell on the steel soles of his _geta_ and then Mugen spun around behind the Widower.

“And the best of you guys got gutted like a fish,”

“Are you referring to Kagetoki Kariya?” the Widower protected his back, gained some ground by a simple tilt of his hips that cut up the space within Mugen’s line of defense, “His problem was that he thought he had surpassed his own master,”

The Widower’s next strike drew blood. He’d merely rapped Mugen’s knuckles, like a teacher instructing a child the consequences of real steel for the first time. The Widower’s eyes had lost their rheumatic stupor.

“Beware the ones forgotten by the world, boy,”

Mugen looked at his knuckles, sucked off the blood.

“Yeah,” he said, “You do that,”

Fuu had been sparing her attention between Mugen and the Widower and the men at the entrance. They had been moving steadily toward her, and even if she backed up there was nowhere for her to go. She held Mugen’s dagger in her hand; they’d long ago taught her the proper way to hold and throw it. Mugen's throwaway gesture had surprised her; she had her own tanto in the folds of her yukata but she would not have been able to draw it in time.

If she threw, however, she’d have to decide which one died first. Death—no, maybe she could just incapacitate one, get them in the foot. She swallowed. Now wasn’t the time to be soft or indecisive. She threw, and the one who was furthest along doubled over, holding his foot in his hand. The other moved toward her with inhuman speed. Apparently he didn’t believe in drawing a blade on a woman, but he had no qualms in choking her to death. Fuu could already feel the bruises forming on her neck but his grip continued to tighten.

The second man went down more decisively than the first. His grip did not immediately relax, even as his jaw went slack and everything else about him collapsed. Fuu finally threw the hands from her neck, tore the wretched hands away. It took her a moment to regain control on her breath. Her gaze began at the ground, the dark pool forming close to her feet, then she thought she recognized those well-worn sandals, the prayer beads, the alabaster face.

“Jin,” Her eyes were moist for several reasons, but mostly gratitude.

Jin went to cover her exposed side. “Let them finish this,”

She kept pace with him, wall on one side and his body a shield on the other, his blade at the ready, and they almost made it to the exit. Jin had explained how he’d already taken care of the two men at the back when they were accosted by several shadowed figures. Jin seemed to know them. Most of them had indistinct shapes, but one of them was a woman. Jin exchanged Fuu into her custody.

“Etsu and Fernando are safe for now,” the woman, Yatsuha told her.

Fuu turned and watched as Jin stepped forward. The Widower calmly watched Jin’s approach even as he fended off Mugen’s frenzied motions.

“I am an old man,” he called over his shoulder, “But in my prime I could have taken half a dozen men at once. To ask me to fight two boys is of even lesser consequence,”

“You still have eyes,” Jin said, drawing his sword, “You know our skill,”

“Formidable, yes,” the Widower grunted, but with a motion pushed Mugen back again. They stood, the three of them forming a triangle.

“I marvel,” said the Widower, “Not a drop of blood on the ground. This _is_ a holy place,”

“I don’t understand,” said Jin, “You profess the same faith as your late wife. You never spoke up against her crucifixion. You welcome a foreign priest into your home and even let him turn your house into a church. Why do you raise a hand now?”

“My wife died for a purpose,” said the Widower, “Her faith was pure, unlike these foreigners. They are to be blamed for her death—what would Tokugawa care, if the Christ himself had chosen to walk in geta on the peninsula? Instead, he chose to wear a foreign body. That doomed us all. So I will damn, damn them that made my wife choose between her faith and her life,”

He tipped back his head and laughed. “The shogunate finally know I’m still a threat, their quiet and pitiable garden keeper. Oh, they marveled at my loyalty following the death of my wife. But I let my sword rust in their sheath. I draw it only for me, only for rightful sacrifice. Let the villagers have their faith—I will protect them. But I have no mercy on these troublesome foreigners and these heartless shogunate agents,”

He smiled, “I’m afraid I can have no mercy on you, either,”

Mugen had managed to sneak up on him. The Widower blocked Mugen’s downward strike, but only barely.

“Come on you old windbag, put your money where your mouth is!”

Jin came from the other side, and still the Widower moved quickly to block the attack. He traded blows between the two men, but when he finally took offensive back he managed to cut into the fabric of Jin’s hakama and bruise Mugen’s ribs with the hilt of his sword.   

Fuu felt a new body at her back. She turned her head, saw the length and breadth of Fernando. Fresh blood and bandages on his shoulder. There was a look on his face that looked like it came from years and years ago; the shadow of Fernando’s past obscured his face. She let Fernando pass. Behind him, Etsu came and wrapped her arms around the girl. That’s when Fuu twisted her head, to warn Fernando, and she saw the sword in his hand.

The sound of steel continued as Fernando kneeled in the middle of the sanctuary. He placed the sword on his knee, bowed over it, making the offering. Then the tip of the sword bit into the unfinished floor, and he waited there.

Fuu watched how the fight naturally evolved; it changed the fighters. Jin’s moves quickened, gradually became more and more unpredictable. Mugen began to move in pattern with Jin’s movements, only changing up the rhythm of his movements. Theirs was a dance they could only teach the other. They didn’t even know they were doing it.

A fight of such skill could only last so long. The air was soon steamy with their conflict, the late August storm thunderous but retreating outside. It must have been high noon, but it didn’t look it from the sky. One flash of lightening was all it took. The Widower’s heart was strong but his steps faltered. He landed on one knee and two swords were poised at either side of his neck.

Fernando stood then. “Hold.”

Mugen and Jin looked at him, watched him slowly approach. Fuu could not see it from where she stood, but the Widower smiled.

“I don’t fear death,” said the Widower, “For with it I can haunt you,”

“ _Eu sou assombrado diariamente pelo Espírito Santo_ ,” said Fernando, softly. He motioned to Jin and Mugen.

“Not here,” he told them.

Fuu watched as they escorted the Widower from the sanctuary, presumably took him far from the house. She did not watch. She did not imagine. She held onto Etsu, who held onto her. Fuu felt tears in her hair, but when she walked out of the house a moment later it would all be rain.

*

It was strange, but the most natural thing for them to do was return to Etsu’s house, to eat, and then, to sleep.

When Fuu awoke, it was early nightfall. She went to the back of the house, looked out at the moonlit night, the land and sky cleared by the day’s storm. She sighed, remembering the work of that day. She knew it would heal over, ugly at first, like new skin, but perhaps with time the scar would be faint.

She moved bare feet through cool grass, standing at the perimeter of the sunflowers. She turned and looked for him over the horizon.

He came, hands in his pockets, hands still. She did not ask him what he had done for those men, what it was he was leaving behind. She knew him so well; she knew him so incomplete. That was how it always was, she had learned, with people. She only wanted as many years as she had to know him, to know his tomorrow, and the day after that, and, heaven willing, the day after that too.

 “You can have it,” he said, “Just promise you can handle it,”

 Fuu laughed, “That’s easy,”

She grabbed his hand. It was easier for both if she didn’t look him in the eye this time.

“Nice and short,” she said, passing her thumb along the edge of his fingernails, “I always liked your hands the best,”

*

It had been violent like everything else in his life—this whole thing had slowly gutted him from inside out. Fire and water, burning, drowning, until one day and it had settled softly within him like the whole thing had just been a breeze passing through. He just woke up with it one day.

He’d begun hacking away at flimsy houses to make flimsy money, but it was the first hard-earned money he’d ever made, and when he actually showed promise at it and began to take it seriously all he could dream about was a woman moving through the entrance, or at the window he shaped, or under the roof, under him, in his arms, and it was only her face and voice for a while, but when he replaced it with anybody else he’d forget what they looked like and she’d come back stronger and clearer than before, and until the house was built and she was safe and somehow his, it would haunt him—actually haunt him, physically, like a phantom limb.

He had experience with ghosts, though. She could be one more and he’d circumnavigate her in his dreams. It was annoying, but he’d chewed on the habit long enough to just deal with it. A healthy equilibrium, the pull-the-rug-out-from-underneath-me success would have been worse. It would have taken luck, fate, faith, wisdom, work: he fooled around with the first two ladies, but those last three reminded him of things he wasn’t and he didn’t like it.

Until he drew the design for the house and realized the one peaceful thing he liked was staring at the ocean, he laughed at the idea of settling down and fading out. After that journey he’d given up on dying early; he just wouldn’t admit that to anybody. He found himself saving money—him, saving money. He’d shrug. He genuinely didn’t want to spend his energy on cock fights, Burmese women, dice. He’d learned the pain of starting over. When he half-assed the structure of a house, for example, he just worked three times as long and still earned the same amount of coin. Screw that. He’d do it right once and get it over with. That’s how he got to know a little of wisdom and work. Faith was still only something he needed in his nightmares, but the more he dreamed of her, the more he needed something to hold onto. He didn’t like wanting the real thing, because there was no way in hell he could earn that now.

 

*

She kissed his hands, and when his hands shook he let just let them keep on shaking this time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, my apologies all you who understand the lovely language that is Portuguese. I did the thing--I used Google Translate to help me with that Portuguese line. I wish I had enough insider know-how to make it sing; my only hope was it wasn't too stiff or broke some unspoken grammar rule. Of course, feel free to correct on that front!
> 
> Second of all, DONE (except for the next chapter, the epilogue, and the last chapter, which is just meta-commentary. I've worked on this fanfiction on and off for six weeks, too long, but then again every time I work on fanfiction I learned numerous things about my writing. Because writing is writing is writing. Parts of this were written just moments before I typed these notes, so those might be the bits that don't read so fresh a week from now. I've tried editing as I can, but again, the beauty of ff is that you're not really supposed to sink in as much time as if it were a professional piece. I want something finished. I wrote this because I needed some Fuugen in my life, and here it is. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
> 
> Thanks, dear, patient, presumably kind but willing to critique fairly if so inclined readers. If you want meta-commentary, just skimmy onto the sixth chapter. Next is the epilogue. :3


	5. [House by the Sea]

V. [House by the Sea]

_the gloves are off, the wisdom teeth are out_

_what you on about?_

_I feel it in my bones, I feel it in my bones_

_I'm stronger now, I'm ready for the house_

_such a modest mouse_

_I can't do it alone, I can't do it alone_

**_-Vampire Weekend, “Step”_ ** **_(Unbelievers Album Ver.)_ **

She always imagined people made love in the moonlight, but her experience was being married in the early morning and taken to bed with red festival streamers still snaking through the air outside, and the sunlight over her husband’s shoulders—and this she always remembered whenever she thought the color red. Her wedding kimono, the clothes he wore, the futon, the flowers in the vase, his skin. He held himself back for a very long time, made himself stupid and fumbling because he had never had to coax a woman very much, he had never had to stick around and make a home in a woman’s bed.

Plenty of women had told Fuu it wasn’t her job to like it—but it was hard watching him so completely a loss. She hadn’t married that kind of man. She placed her hand on his stomach.

“It’s just,” she didn’t have the word for it, “It can be whatever it was before, for you—whatever it is men do,”

Her hand left his stomach, “It’s just something that happens,” 

He looked at her, really looked at her.  

“No,” he said, “It’s not,”

She never knew what to expect with him. Sometimes she actually got the answers she deserved.

Over time, the house that Mugen had built, the roof her husband had thatched, became scented with years and years’ worth of oranges. The girls loved them, the boys left the peels everywhere. Fuu cut them so that the skins bloomed like flowers and Mugen dug at them with the fingernails he kept short. And when they lay side by side, cold sweat, his lips at her neck spoke of oranges, of all things. He wasn’t good at speaking out loud the things she couldn’t put into words herself—so they took the form of a bowl of oranges, purchasing roosters and then promising not to put them in cock fights, laughing at their sons’ ineptitude with catching fish, and other strange things.

She even forgave him (more than once) for teaching his sons to handle a sword by cutting the heads of her sunflowers clean off. Even years later she marveled at the sensation of walking with him through a field of sunflowers that were his height. She’d look up at him, framed with gold, and he’d smirk at her sentimentality. He’d married her though, hadn’t he? He should’ve known better; she would always be sentimental. She wondered what he was thinking when he carded his fingers through her hair, after they’d been in the privacy of the field whiling the afternoon away, and she wondered if he had ever tried being this way with anyone else. Whenever she asked him even innocent questions of his past, he always asked her why she thought of the past at all.

Their first child was a girl, and Fuu had swaddled her in a green cloth that Etsu embroidered with vines. Fuu asked him what they should name her, and he said why didn’t they name their children like he was named? She almost wanted to laugh at the names he suggested, or be cross with him, but she realized he hadn’t been trying to provoke her.

“They really called you that?” she asked him.

He shrugged, “Supposed to keep the demons away—didn’t work for me, I guess. I chose the best name, and then the sons-of-bitches couldn’t stay away,”

Despite the misgivings, Fuu chose the name Chikage. It was an illustrious name, which meant Mugen had had no say in it at all.

Mugen wasn’t like most fathers; he didn’t know stoicism and he hadn’t been taught distance. He hadn’t been taught anything. Every new parent is a complete amateur, but he was the amateur’s amateur. He took all four of their newborns away from their mother right after birth, leaving her with only the midwife’s comfort, and would hold the babe for an hour, imagining all the ways its bones could break. (Fuu learned to accept this by the birth of their third child). Their children were clean and healthy. He didn’t know why that surprised him.

It was a household that neither of them had imagined for themselves. After the children had been born, most nights were spent in laughter—Mugen could always make the children laugh because his sense of humor was little more than childish. Fuu laughed too, despite her best intentions. Neighbors would sometimes stop and listen and wonder what could be so funny.

Mugen had the habit of making the girls cry and the boys impossible, all the same. Chikage mystified him with her tranquility—didn’t have the presence of her mother, wasn’t cold like a certain ronin he knew—she was completely and utterly a presence all her own. Ikue, her younger sister, was flighty and scrappy and feral and looked so much like her mother—too small, he wasn’t good with small things. She was the reader of the family, however, and would read to him when he was bored, when he couldn’t go to sleep because being a settled man made more susceptible to nightmares from a lifetime that seemed so long ago he could only remember them like stories he’d tell when he was drunk. So often he requested the bloodiest stories and the revengeful psalms—but Ikue did not protest. It was a strange thing they shared and Fuu, for her part, let them have it without understanding it herself.

Then, their sons. Morihei—he got that name from a bet gone bad. They told Jin he could name their son if he caught the largest carp the day they went out to the river for Tanabata. Mugen hadn’t expected to lose.

Their eldest son had no sense of preservation. Morihei choked on fish bones at six and nearly drowned twice, twisted his ankle, shot himself in the foot with a child’s bow and arrow, and never wanted to learn the rules of fighting—just like Mugen. His younger brother Kenten grew up so tall that Mugen begrudgingly bought himself a new pair of high-topped _geta_ just to feel like the man of the house again. Kenten was earnest and trusting, but once his trust was broken it never fully healed up inside—just like Mugen.

When the children asked about their father’s strange blue markings, he told them a new story every time. The boys liked the stories that were closest to the truth, but the girls liked Fernando’s explanations best—that they were the marks of a reluctant warrior of God.

“He’s trying to save our goddamn children,” Mugen would complain, usually with alcohol involved. He watched his daughters have Christian weddings and he was happily drunk at each one. Fuu wondered why her father’s God had been so kind as to let her Chikage marry that strapping young son of Jin’s. The dividends of a coin toss staggered her all the rest of her days. It was, entirely, a life she hadn’t allowed herself to conceive, but it was hers.

Etsu later told Fuu about what she called indigo moments—the color of the divine. All the sounds of Fuu’s life gathered there, and all the scents, and she remembered them all at once. From the children, the sound of pan flutes and applause, mischief and falling from trees, speaking snippets of English and Portuguese when they came home from Fernando’s school. The sound of their laughter screaming down to the far end of the beach, and the ocean’s pull. It was her humming the Chijuryahama, her husband lingering sometimes to listen. It was his own laughter, warmer than it had ever been, in moments where rough fingers made themselves soft, or when she pretended to sleep and really she was watching how he looked when he thought alone. It was the seven months—almost eight—that Mugen left and she didn’t know if he’d ever come back; she didn’t know who he spent his nights with; she counted their money nightly and watched her youngest boy encounter a kind of cold distrust that he never fully grew out of. Upon his return, Mugen was more elbows and scars than he’d ever been, and she made love to him angrily but without regret. He never said, plainly, that he loved her (what husband did?) but he once asked her why she looked out for him in the first place. The words she spoke weren’t her own, but it presented itself to her as the only answer, and she let Mugen do the thinking:

“You should be loved before you’re loveable,”

He then told her that he hadn’t been with any woman but her since the day they married. So, even though she’d already decided to, she forgave him.

And it was the sound of the tea kettle, and Etsu’s last words, and her mother’s voice got mixed in there somehow. And it was the smell of sunflowers because she would die only if she were surrounded by sunflowers. And so, she did, pearl grasped in hand.

The house that the carpenter built sheltered them the rest of their days.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fin. Next chapter is simply some rambling commentary.


	6. Meta-commentary

_How else can one tell a responsible love story between a scoundrel and a lady without taking influence from **Beauty and the Beast**?_

_The solution to my love for Fuugen came when I was reading LIFE’s recent-ish special on **Beauty and the Beast** , and I realized that is exactly what kind of love story Fuu and Mugen would have. _

_Other influences? Well, this whole fic is inspired by the lyrics of “Obokuri Eeumi.” And listening to a bevy of Blood Orange as per usual. Frank Ocean got mixed in there this summer._

_There’s also that golden quote of Shinichiro Watanabe’s—“Spike and Mugen aren't very straightforward in expressing themselves. For example, even if there's a girl they like standing right in front of them, they don't pursue her directly - in fact, they do the opposite, they ignore her almost. I think that part is kind of like me. If I was to sum it up, it's kind of like being a little contradictory or rebellious.”_

_ A note on Mugen’s language: _

_For the fic, I only used stronger language where I knew it would translate the sentiment better. Or when it sounded funnier, because when you try to censor in English it just sounds stupid (‘You dastard!’). Otherwise, I'm not one to put much stock in it for *suddenly finds oneself in a Jane Austen novel* "day-to-day correspondence and what passes for wit."_

_ Some Thoughts on the Series’ Ending [Spoilers]: _

_Flannery O’Connor once said this of endings, that they come_ “when nothing more than relating to the mystery of that character’s personality can be show through that particular dramatization.”

_Do I think Samurai Champloo had the best ending? Well, I think it’s an ending. Actually, it cops out a lot. The creators never really earned a way for Jin and Mugen to survive their respective ordeals, and they didn’t really earn the 180-degree character arc flip at the end. It’s all kind of brushed over. (BUT, Mugen had a broken arm at the end of the fight, so we miss at least six weeks of their traveling together before they get to that crossroads, because his arm is healed then—often the series skipped out over great emotional aftermath—kind of just going from set up to set up, climax to climax. So I think a lot of important details were discussed before they just split like that—it’s not like they would have been, ‘Naw, it’s totally a secret where I’m going now good luck trying to find me bruhs’). The only way I can parse it is that these characters will grow more on their own and choose what kinds of people they want to be without the past dictating it for them—but that doesn’t mean that they’ll never cross paths again. Watanabe is a big proponent of letting people decide things for themselves; he won’t even confirm a certain character’s maybe-death. So if you want to believe that they meet again, do. Nothing’s stopping you; the show certainly doesn’t rule out the possibility._

_Overall, the point of the series was that they confronted their past—but they did so by building a future, by forming actual bonds with people. Their journey began with a promise; the entire series was built around relationships humanizing people. Though I understood and appreciated the ending more the second time through, I still have a hard time believing it to the best and only ending that **Champloo** could have had. Rest of the finale was a-ok in my opinion. _

_ Character Development: _

_So it hit me that Mugen isn’t going to be a complete bloodthirsty dastard after episode 26. His sword shatters and he accepts Jin as his equal. His bloodlust is finally, finally quelled—“It’s funny, I don’t feel like killing ya anymore.”  I also used to interpret that Fuu just up and left the boys on a whimsy, just like she took them up on her quest on a whimsy. The ending, however, reveals that they didn’t get together on the fly—Fuu made her own fate._

_Absolutely the goal was to create a Fuu/Mugen epilogue that I would be satisfied with. That meant it was going to a be a relatively slow burn, because Mugen it one hard nut to crack. I had to cover some realistic growth he would have gone through to become less of a douche._

_This road trip, these friendships, they broadened their lives—and gave them freedom. Mugen starts out the series living and acting like an animal. Then by the finale he acknowledges his disgrace and throws away his sword—twice. The first time for Fuu, the second time for Jin. These moments are not going to give him a 180-degree personality change, but it does symbolize that he’s not just living for himself anymore. He smiles during the entire ending sequence, hands in pockets, hands still. Jin walks in the opposite direction—because they’ll always be opposites, and that works out just fine. They’ve already established that Jin has something of permanence to look forward to—a devotion to and future with Shino. And Fuu takes the high road, because this has been her story all along. Her path is straight and simple—she goes from the Past right toward the Future. Or is she heading back to where she started, making a full circle journey, so the boys know where to find her? I can’t say for sure. I like to let a work speak for itself—so ultimately, not its creators, not its fans, just what the work itself was able to convey. It all points to these bonds being more than fleeting._

_You bet they’ll meet again._

_ Random Notes: _

_*I made little nods to the fuukinchou theory. Despite a few compelling counter-arguments, I still like the fuukinchou theory. Without that theory, the bird (and it’s a really random bird, guys) during Mugen’s almost-death scenes and the ending of the entire anime would just be random, cheap, half-arsed symbolism. So, yeah, I’m gonna believe that Fuu is short for the bird or that the bird represents Fuu and/or Jin even if it has nothing to do with the kanji of their names._

_* If I learned anything from this fic, it’s that romance is hard. And realizing how far behind I am—but if I can’t work out my writerly sins in fanfiction, then I really need to get the stick out of my arse._

_Lastly, thanks for not only reading the fic, but the sprawling meta-commentary! Your diligence is appreciated._


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